Chapter 15: Where This Goes Next

You built a program that didn't exist before you started, one line at a time, and every keyword in it now means something to you, not just something you copied. That's the whole point of this book, and you've done it. This short chapter is about what comes after.

What QF Code Doesn't Do Yet

Part of being honest with you means telling you plainly that this language doesn't do everything yet, as of version 1.1.0, classes, closures, modules, and a handful of smaller gaps besides. Appendix D covers every one of them in full, and chapter 16 makes the fuller case for where the language is actually headed from here. None of it is a flaw in what you just learned. Everything you built in this book is real programming, not a simplified imitation of it. The concepts, variables, loops, functions, scope, error handling, transfer directly to whatever you learn next. Only the syntax changes.

If You Want to Go Deeper: Underneath the Syntax

This book taught you QF Code specifically. Underneath the Syntax takes the opposite approach, the same fundamentals you just learned, shown side by side across several real, modern languages, so you can see what stays the same everywhere and what's just a particular language's way of writing it down. If you're curious how the loop you just wrote looks in JavaScript or Python, that's where to go next.

Keep This Book Around

The appendices aren't meant to be read once and set aside. Appendix A is every built-in, in full. Appendix E is the short version, for the moment you just need a quick reminder of how something's written. Appendix C is there for whenever an error message stops making sense. Come back to any of them whenever you need to, for as long as you're writing QF Code.

One more chapter follows this one, a shorter, more personal one, about where QF Code itself is headed. This chapter was the practical part. That one's the rest of the story.

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