How do you approach programming with Plus42 ?

[Die Schauflers]

Hello colleagues,

I follow this group—admittedly, I only contribute once—as an interested reader and check back almost daily for new posts. 

I'm interested in how you others get code into Plus42. Do you do everything "directly" "in Plus42" or do you code outside of it and then copy and paste in ?

I'd like to describe my approach and hope to hear about your shared experiences... 

Personally, I've ended up coding in an external text editor and now almost exclusively use Plus42 as a "runtime engine" via copy/paste. This reduces my comments from the editor to pure program instructions when pasting—it works incredibly easily and without errors.

My tools and workflow are: 

Windows: Notepad++ for code entry 

iOS: Textastic for code entry 

Dropbox: This is where my text files are stored, which I edit from Windows and iOS.

Coding in the text editors: 

I add plenty of comments to the text files and use the automatic code formatting of Notepad++ and Textastic for better readability. This way, I can still understand my program instructions even after a longer time or if I want to maintain or extend them. For me, this is the biggest improvement compared to typing without comments on the keyboard in the "real" HP42S – "only 50 lines and still no longer recognizable what the program is doing." 

I transfer code to Plus42 via the clipboard (copy and paste). I only enter a few program instructions directly in Plus42. This is usually limited to STOP or PROMPT instructions to execute programs step by step from there. 

And how do you do it? 

Best regards, Hubert

[Andy]

Hi Hubert,

I use Excel.  Cut and pasting programs from Plus42 or Free42 works great.  I use the "Text to Columns" tool in the "Data" tab to separate the program line # and program statements into individual cells and then I arrange the program in several columns so I can see more.  

I like Excel for the following reasons:

1.  42 programs are narrow in width and in Excel I can fit a large program on the screen by having several columns.  I have wondered if Thomas could incorporate 2 or 3 column display into Plus/Free42 program editing (and on SwissMicros too).  Much of the display is unused during program editing.

2.  I can color code program labels to make it easier to see the program structure at a glance, and bold is useful too

3.  You can cut and paste a program from Excel to Plus/Free42 without the line numbers.

4.  I can use tabs to preserve a working program and create a new one when I'm creating.

5.  I can use Excel for calculations to verify what's going on

6.  You can also cut and paste matrices from Plus/Free42 back and forth from Excel and it automatically puts each element in its own cell.  Once a matrix is in Excel you can easily graph the data as well.  Earlier this year I made a program do calculate and animate the double pendulum problem.  I stored the transient data to a large matrix in Plus42, and to make sure my program was correct I would copy the matrix into Excel and graphically compare it to known good data.

Here is a sample worksheet I used recently when creating a program to make the bifurcation diagram from the logistics map (attached).

Best regards,

Andy

[Thomas Okken]

I do everything directly in Plus42, but for larger programs, I enter them on my computer instead of on my phone. Entering programs on the computer means I can avoid having to find functions in menus, and instead I can use XEQ and spell them out, which is very fast when typing on a physical QWERTY keyboard.

But most of the programming I do is small, ad-hoc programs, and I'm perfectly happy entering those directly in Plus42 on the phone. On those occasions when I have to spell something out, the pop-up keyboard makes even that reasonably quick, certainly faster than using the ALPHA menu.

[Die Schauflers]

Thanks Andy and Thomas,

it's good to see that Plus42 doesn't require committing to a single method. I maybe had somewhat rigid ideas about this, but your experience confirms that, depending on the situation, "everything in Plus42" or, in the case of larger programs, also with "external inputs" can be elegantly solved.

Best regards

Hubert

[Andy]

Also to add when you're in Plus42, you can adjust the display to display many rows.  For example, setting the display to 50 rows by 25 columns (50 25 SETDS) will display 50 lines of programming (see attached).