Preface
Who this book is for
For programmers who already know a language and want tiko. It does not assume you know BASIC, and it does not assume you have met FreeBASIC. Where tiko differs from FreeBASIC in a way that would surprise someone who knows it, a sidebar says so.
How this book is organized
Conventions
The version this book describes
Every program in this book was compiled and run, on Windows and on Linux, with one pinned version of the compiler. The pin, and the exact toolchains, are recorded in the book's repository.
The reference: the tiko wiki
This book teaches the language; it does not list every keyword, option and library function. That is the job of the tiko wiki, github.com/PaulSquires/tiko-lang/wiki, the language's reference documentation. Keep it open beside the book. The pages you will use most:
- Feature Index — every language feature and library, one line each, with a link to its reference page.
- Function Finder — every function, grouped by what you want to do, with one line on what each one does.
- Keyword Index — every keyword, statement and operator, A to Z, each with its full definition.
- Compatibility — for code brought from FreeBASIC: what differs, and what is the same.
The wiki also carries tutorials (concurrency, packages and modules, translating C headers) and a page for each part of the toolchain. Where a chapter shows one form of a statement or a few members of a library, the wiki has the rest.