video + text + action

[mucked]

Who: Peggy Carter & YOU
Broadcast: Y, fleetwide.
Action: Aboard the Starstruck, if you like.
When: Today.

[ a video feed flickers to life, and fights for a moment to adequately focus on its subject. peggy carter sits in the kitchen aboard the starstruck, cup of tea and her elbow and half a biscuit in her hand. dabbing at crumbs, she sets her food aside and offers the network a bright smile. ]

That message -- the ominous one, in the bizarre language? It put me in mind of the sort of cryptograms and puzzles you might see in the Sunday paper. [ her expression is cheery enough, although she's not being wholly honest about her interest in such games. she won't be the one to say the words bletchley and park.] I loved them. Them, and crosswords. I thought maybe some of you might like them, too. [ ... ] We could do a few together. I'm not saying we all join a club, exactly, but back home they were always better solved in good company.

Let's start you off with one that's easy enough. But there's no shame in needing a hint, if needed. For what it's worth, the text I'm attaching is, in its deciphered form, English -- not yet certain how the augments' translation will handle it. We'll see.

BLSTKBC YLBSFKGISRX XL QIYT SL SFVBWIKAKJR STR QKBZ VX V XSRVZU EIFELXR — V ELKBS LB OTKYT STR XLIA QVU NKM KSX KBSRAARYSIVA RUR.

[ -- and then an afterthought: ]

...By chance, has anyone been brewing their own beer?

Comments

[mucked]

[ although hardly a humble human-being, peggy at least takes well to learning. in the middle spaces of these moments she feels like she's back in the huts at bletchley -- shortly after intake, and when her cohort were still being taught the more technical aspects of their decoding work. ]

String variables are text, so -- [ a puff of her cheeks. she pulls the mental bricks apart and reassembles them with a bit of pragmatism. she starts be settling on an appropriate textual variable. ] Like nationality. Or even the fleet's vessels.

[ peggy grabs the pencil and (in a tight and elegant script) improvises a solution from the pieces she's already been taught. she writes: ] var string fleetVessel=starstruck;

[ it's her best guess. and even then, she can already recognize the limitations of such a simple line. code must build on code, she suspects. ]

[winn]

[ he smiles, because she fell exactly where he expected her to. he framed it that way, so the lesson will be easier to remember. ]

Really close - but when you write it like that the system will read it as if you're inserting the value of another variable called starstruck into your new variable, and since it doesn't exist - you'll get an error. Text values have to go in - [ adding them ] double quotation marks.

[mucked]

[ hm. gently, she sets the pencil down on the table. peggy eyes the added dialogue marks -- remembering them, certainly. ]

You set me a trap, Winn. [ she doesn't smile. indeed, there's a toothless breath of frustration because she resents the tactic while also recognizing its utility. she cannot fault him. michael used to do much the same, when they were children scrapping in the backyard. he'd leave obvious openings and allow his younger sister the brief joy of exploiting said opening before thumping her on the back of the head. ] I see I'll have to take better care in future.

[winn]

Better me than the code.

[ there are so many tiny little rules that can mess up months of work if you forget about them, that can take ages to find if you're working without an automated debugger - and even if you, if you make the wrong kind of mistake you're screwed, you could be stuck debugging for weeks. he has no idea how far she means to go with these lessons, but he's determined to give her a good foundation to build on.

(and yeah, he enjoys feeling like his old self again, like he's the best at something. it may not be nice, but he hasn't gotten to feel of real use in a long time, and he's savoring his little triumphs.) ]

You can use as few or as many variables in the same command as you want, and you can mix and match their types, as long as you remember where to put your quotations. For example -

[ writing into the app now

var string vessel1="Starstruck";
var int numOfStarCrew=7;
var string vessel2="Tourist";
var int numOfTourCrew=6;

System.Console.WriteLine("The "+vessle1+" has "+numOfStarCrew+" people. The "+vessel2+" has "+numOfTourCrew+ " people.
Total crew: "+numOfStarCrew+numOfTourCrew);

clicks execute, and the screen now reads: ]

The Starstruck has 7 people. The Tourist has 6 people.
Total crew: 13.

This is butt-ugly code and when you'll advance you'll never do it, but it's a good exercise to get the rules straight in your head. So, build something that mixes different kinds of variables. [ handing her the phone ]