Now that you have installed Euphoria, here are some things you can try:

• Run each of the demo programs in the demo directory. You just type ex or exw or exu followed by the name of the .ex or .exw or .exu file, e.g.

             ex buzz
  

  will run the file buzz.ex. Depending on your graphics card you may have to edit a line in some of the .ex files to select a different graphics mode. Some demos try to use SVGA modes, which might not work with your video card. You need DOS mouse support to run mouse.ex and ttt.ex).

  You can also double-click on a .ex (.exw) file from Windows, but you will have to "associate" .ex files with ex.exe and .exw files with exw.exe. A few of the demos are meant to be run from the command line, but most will look ok from Windows.

• Use the Euphoria editor, ed, to edit a Euphoria file. Notice the use of colors. You can adjust these colors along with the cursor size and many other "user-modifiable" parameters by editing constant declarations in ed.ex. Use Esc q to quit the editor or Esc h for help. There are several, even better, Euphoria-oriented editors in the Archive.

• Create some new benchmark tests. See demo\bench. Do you get the same speed ratios as we did in comparison with other popular languages?

• Read the manual in doc\refman.doc or view the HTML version of the manual by double-clicking it and starting your Web browser. The simple expressive power of Euphoria makes this manual much shorter than manuals for other languages. If you have a specific question, type guru followed by a list of words. The guru program will search all the .doc files as well as all the example programs and other files, and will present you with a sorted list of the most relevant chunks of text that might answer your enquiry.

• Try running a Euphoria program with tracing turned on. Add:

             with trace
             trace(1)
  

  at the beginning of any .ex or .exw file.

• Run some of the tutorial programs in euphoria\tutorial.

• Try modifying some of the demo programs.

  First some simple modifications (takes less than a minute):

  What if there were 100 C++ ships in Language Wars? What if sb.ex had to move 1000 balls instead of 125? Change some parameters in polygon.ex. Can you get prettier pictures to appear? Add some funny phrases to buzz.ex.

  Then, some slightly harder ones (takes a few minutes):

  Define a new function of x and y in plot3d.ex.

  Then a challenging one (takes an hour or more):

  Set up your own customized database by defining the fields in mydata.ex.

  Then a major project (several days or weeks):

  Write a smarter 3D TicTacToe algorithm.

• Try writing your own program in Euphoria. A program can be as simple as:

             ? 2+2
  

  Remember that after any error you can simply type ed to jump into the editor at the offending file and line.

  Once you get used to it, you'll be developing programs much faster in Euphoria than you could in Perl, Java, C/C++ or any other language that we are aware of.