Code Tutor If you have arrived here with questions about Code Tutor feel free to email questions to our support staff.

Coding Tutor was created to help anyone that would like to understand and learn about coding.

The best description might be that it works like an interactive book where you can both read and try.

You will learn by doing.

One of the great joys of writing code is watching it execute and being able to interactively engage with the program as it executes. No currently available coding app on iOS offers the ability to execute (interpret) code and run interactively on the device. Instead they submit the code to a remote server.

Not so here.

When read(expresion, expression, …) is running, you are prompted to enter responses for the variables interactively.

Learning by doing is fun.

I chose Pascal as the language because it is easy to read and understand. Pascal is a well structured procedural language with relatively simple structure.

Today there are many beautiful object oriented (OO) programming languages. In my experience, object oriented languages (Java, Swift, C#, Python, Kotlin, TypeScript, etc.) are significantly harder to grasp.

Pascal simple and provides a solid foundation for the novice learning to code.

I have implemented a tiny Pascal compiler, interpreter and runtime environment where you can safely learn and play in a sandbox which will not crash or otherwise wreak havoc on your device.

Keep in mind my goal here was not to create a complete Pascal compiler supporting every aspect of the language and runtime. This is a tiny app designed for teaching. Once you have the basic concepts, I would encourage you to go investigate Free Pascal or any of a number of complete Pascal compilers that are freely available.

Here’s a brief summary of what is supported.

Variable data types:

• Integer
• Real
• String
• FileHandle
• Arrays of Integer, Real, or String.

This represents enough to begin learning. I have not implemented user defined types, Boolean, or Records all of which are provided by a complete and full Pascal compiler. File writes are restricted to a limit of 8,192 writes per FileHandle. Array length is similarly limited to 8,192 elements. Enough to learn but not blow-up your devices.

Runtime library:

• Console write, writeln, read
• File (sandboxed) read, write, assign, append, reset, rewrite, close, seek (begin, or end), and delete.
• Array length (ArrayLen)
• String manipulation including StrLen, SubString (a.k.a. Copy), StrSplit
• Type conversions ToReal, ToInteger
• IsFinite to test for finite Real values
• Exit to end currently executing program

Control flow:

• if expression then else
• while expression do
• repeat statements until expression
• for var := expression {to,downto} do

Operator support is similarly a subset of the full Pascal language.

The App explains these concepts in detail and provides complete working code that can be modified, and executed interactively to help teach the concepts.

Finally, programming is a trade that can be learned by anyone with the aptitude. I created this app to help others discover the joys of writing code.

I am happy to answer questions, review programs you have written for which you have questions. In the Forward section of the doc’s you will find an email where you can send questions.

I am personally grateful to all of the giants that have gone before me and provided beautiful programming languages. Specifically I want to thank Anders Hejlsberg, a giant that helped me along the way.

Hopefully this tiny app will similarly inspire future programmers.

Cheers- jkountz

Welcome to Support

Thank you for purchasing the software, we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed producing it. If you have any questions, we are happy to assist (email).
iPhone, iPad Video Tutorials:

Add Coins

Restore from Dropbox

Backup to Dropbox

Sets Introduction

Touch Secure

Coin Grade

Custom Reports

Tip: quickly entering coins

Moving coins between collections

US Coin for Mac Video Tutorials:

• Adding your first coin
• Customizing the Collection View 
• Restore 
• Backup  

We are always open to feedback & suggestions for future releases. Feel free to email us.

SaintsSoft LLC Development Team

Fast cross iOS device backup

Dropbox is depressingly slow for backup of a nice large collection.

My test collection is only 250 coins with two photos on most but not all. It takes me 20 minutes to backup the first time. It’s annoying. I apologize. If the internet is even moderately flaky Dropbox’s backend web-servers are what we call in the commercial software business, dog-shit. I have personally fixed two of their code defects. Apple’s iCloud is even worse at the coding API level. It’s like they are hiring numb-skulls to write code using the million monkey’s in a room can create software theory. 

The good news is that once you get all of those photos up to the Cloud, you are then going to have to pay Dropbox if you exceed 2GB. 

It’s a damn racket.

You can short-circuit the pay-wall Pirates by transferring your collection data manually between devices using your Mac. (PC with iTunes should work too).

Instructions: 

Manual Backup:

1. Connect your device to your Computer running iTunes
2. Open iTunes and select your device in the DEVICES section on the left side.
3. Across the top, select the Apps tab, and scroll down until you see the File Sharingsection.
4. Under the File Sharing section, select our App (us coin, gold collector, or cent collector).
5. Notice in the right-hand-side, a list fills with all files the app uses.
6. Select all these files, click "Save to..."
7. Select a folder on your computer and save the files.

Manual Restore:

1. Repeat steps 1-3
2. Under the File Sharing section, select the App you want to restore the collection to.
3. In the right side, click "Add..."
4. Find the folder where you saved files from step #6 above.
5. Respond Yes to prompt to replace existing files.
6. Sync your device, this might take awhile. go get a beer.

Reports View

The Reports view allows you to view, create, and either Print or Email yourself reports on your Coin Collections.

Two of the reports have restricted Output options, see notes for Insurance and Export reports below.

P&L

This report prints an approximation of your net position, positive or negative. If you prefer to watch a video tutorial describing this view, click here.

Insurance (Printer Only)

The Insurance report will print full details for each coin, including the photos of the coins. This report can not be emailed as doing so would require all photos associated with your coins be attached to the email, something your email would not allow due to size limits.

Buy List

Coins on this report are coins you would like to add to your collection, but which have not been purchased yet. When you add new coins and skip specifying the purchase date, the software considers this a coin that you will purchase at a future date.

Collection Item Detail

This report provides a condensed list of all coin details, one row in the report for each coin you have.

Purchase Metal Cost by Ounce

This report prints a summary total of precious metal weights, by coin type.

Export (Email Only)

This report allows you to export coin collection details which can be imported into other programs (Numbers, Excel). The file is formatted using the industry standard CSV file format.

Metals

Similar to the Collection Item Detail report, prints one line summary of the precious metal content for each issue.

Duplicates

This report lists all duplicate coins, coins where the Type and Issue match.

Physical Inventory

This report can be used to do a physical inventory report.

Determining Coin Value

As the producer of a numismatic app, we get many questions about coin collecting. The most frequent goes something like this:

Does the App have a way of automatically telling me how much my coins are worth?

Coin value is what numismatics is all about, this is a natural question every collector has. We invested much thought on this question, considered buying a service that would provide a data feed from Coin World or some other source.

Turns out it's not possible to provide 100% accurate estimate's of value on sight unseen coins.

Anyone that tells you otherwise has never sold a coin. If you doubt that, try finding a dealer that will give you an offer sight-unseen. If the coins are numismatically significant, you won't find any dealer willing to make such an offer without first doing an in-person examination of the coins.

Perhaps at some point, third party grading will reach the point where computers will solve this problem. Until then, grade and value determination will remain an art.

Best information

US Coin takes a different approach to value, we place the best information available at your finger-tips. This is facilitated in the App in different ways.

1. Precious metal content
2. Auctions

Precious metal content

Common gold and silver coins (readily available in quantity) are frequently bought and sold based on the value of their base metals. This typically includes 20th century gold and silver. Silver coins (pre-1964) are common and readily available, they typically sell at or very close to spot silver melt prices. The App provides an estimated melt value for these coins. Same goes for common 20th century gold coins (Saints, $10, $5, gold Indian's). For this class of coin, the estimated melt value is a good and accurate benchmark for what the coin will sell for particularly for these coins in below MS-65 grades.

The App provides a precious metal melt calculator. Common Gold $10 Indians in XF frequently sell for 119% of melt value, you can indicate this and the App will automatically calculate an estimated melt value.

Auctions

Actual buy & sell transactions is irrefutably the single best source of pricing data. We recognize that and provide several ways for you to view auction information.

First, when you entering an estimated value (iOS App), we display auctions on the coin to provide comparable information for a price estimate.

Next, in the coin edit view you will notice a large Informational icon at the top of the view (iOS). Touching that will display for you the single best source of numismatic information available on the Web, PCGS's CoinFacts.

CoinFacts provides the most valuable single-source of information on US coins. This includes not just basic reference information (mintage, dimensions, weight, designer) but also estimates of the number of known survivors of the coin, commentary on the issue by world recognized Numismatic experts, recent auctions on the coin, and does this for all grades of the coin. There is no better source of information on US coins.

Understanding Backup, Restore

Occasionally i get an email asking for help when a Customer has "lost my Collection" in Dropbox. Today a customer contacted me with the following message:

Hope you can help, I was trying to add a coin in my collection from my phone by using backup to Dropbox and then I tried putting it on my I pad by restoring think it would pull it in but it just moved that coin to I pad and I lost all my other collections.

A restore operation REPLACES everything you have on your device with whatever was in the Cloud. REPLACE COLLECTION ON DEVICE”.
Notice in bold capital letters on the Restore view it says: “

Backup and Restore work like the movie Higlhlander, there can be only one original copy of a collection. If you want to add a coin to a collection, and then share that change to every device, here’s how you do it:

1) Ensure your device has an up-to-date copy of the collection. 

2) Add the new coin

3) Backup the changes

4) Switch to other device

5) Restore the changes made on device in step #2

Result: Second device now has changes

Now let’s say you want to add a photo to the newly added coin. Here are the steps:

1) Ensure your device has an up-to-date copy of the collection.

2) Select the coin you want to photo

3) Take the photo and add it to the coin

4) Backup changes

5) Switch to other device(s)

6) Restore and notice the new photo

The key to this process is to realize that the Cloud must always be the source of truth. Before you add, change, or delete, you need to ensure your device has an up-to-date copy of the collection. If you are not sure, do a Restore and you will now have whatever the Cloud has. Then make your changes, and finally, Backup to the Cloud so the Cloud now has the original copy of the collection.

The nice part of this, if there is any, is that if you make a mistake on your device, you can always do a Restore and effectively UNDO whatever changes you made.

Tip

If you accidentally replace your collection in Dropbox, Dropbox has an undelete.
You can read about it here.

After you restore the undeleted files in Dropbox, do a RESTORE on your device.

Coin View Folder Icon

What's that new Folder icon on the Coins View - Learn about it

Set Creation

Set Name

This input allows you to enter, change the Name used for the Set.

Automatic Match

During Set creation, the App has capability to search your entire collection for Coin's that should be members of this new Set. This saves you the time of having to individually search thru your Collection and manually designating which Coins should be part of this Set. If you'd like this automatic match-up, enable this option.

Create Coins

This option will instruct the App to automatically create Coins for your Buy list for any Coin in the Set which you do NOT already have. This will save hours of work.  For example, Morgan silver dollars have over 400 distinct coins. If you were to manually add all 400 of these coins, it would likely take 2 days. The App can do that for you in 30 seconds if you enable this option.

If you'd like to create a Set covering every issue in a Type, this option and the Automatic Match option, will save literally days of typing.

Sort

This option is useful when adding / updating a Set. It will cause the App to Sort the Set by natural order (Issue within Type). If you don't enable Sort, new coins will be added to the end of the Set.

Coin Grade View

Video Tutorial - Entering Coin Grade

All inputs in this view are 100% optional, don't know the grade then skip.

Coin Grade allows you to enter whatever grade you choose, whether the coin is graded in a 3rd part plastic slab, or a simple 2x2 card-board holder.

In the Basic section, you have the choice of entering a text description of the grade, and calling it a day. If you prefer a more precise designation, use the Advanced section.

Coin Issue View

This view provides two paths: basic input, advanced.

Basic input allows you to manually enter coin issue information, which typically includes the year and mint mark.

Advanced input allows you to specify more detailed information, all of which is optional. Best way to enter advanced input is to select the issue as listed for this Type in the scroller wheel displayed at the bottom of the view.

In the example screen, the scroller displays: "1907 No Motto MS".

Selecting from this list will automatically populate the REF #, which is the Coin reference number PCGS assigns to all coins. In the example, a 1907 $10 Indian gold eagle has a REF # of 8865

All advanced inputs are optional, however, the REF# is important as it enables integration with PCGS Coin Facts. If the coin has a REF#, the App can open PCGS's CoinFacts web page for that specific coin.

Coin Type View

Basic

This view is perhaps the most important view in the App.  The Lookup option in Advanced allows you to select the coin's Type from the built-in coin dictionary. Selecting the coin from the built-in dictionary will automate some inputs you would otherwise need to enter.

If the coin you want to enter is not contained within the built-in dictionary, you can still add it you just need to enter a couple of more bits of information.

Advanced (Optional)

To complete this section, first select the "Lookup...". This will display a complete list of all US coins ever minted, allow you to choose the exact type you are adding. Furthermore, the Weight and Precious Metal type will be automatically updated based on the Type of coin you just selected from the "Lookup...".

If the Coin is not contained within the built-in dictionary, you can manually set the Precious Metal type and Weight.

Coin Price View

Purchased

This section provides details on the purchase of a coin. A coin is considered on the "Buy" list when no purchase date has been entered. Once a purchase date is entered, the coin is considered owned.

Quantity field allows you to indicate how many of these coins you own. Entering a quantity is a lot easier than entering the same coin multiple times. Personally use the quantity field for common coins, coins which may not have a unique or special numismatic value, for example, pre-1964 silver US coinage.

Market

This section helps establish the Market value of this coin. For most cases, you will enter an Estimated value for the coin. Best source for this kind of information is either an issue of Coin World, eBay or Heritage completed auctions, or for those particularly rate coins PCGS's current coin prices page.

By default, when you open the Estimate view, the App will automatically open a view of current eBay auctions matching that coin.

For coins that are precious metals, the Melt (Gold, Silver) item will show the melt value for the coin. The melt value is calculated as the weight in precious metal for this coin multiplied by the current spot price of the underlying precious metal. The App automatically resolves current spot price real-time, in the background. It then multiplies this by the Weight value entered in the Coin 'Type' view. For coins contained within the built-in dictionary, this happens automatically.

Melt Premium is an optional value you might enter as an alternative to the Estimated value. Common gold coins, like 20th century Saint-Gaudens, typically sell for Spot + $150 in grades up to MS-60. Higher grades have higher melt premiums.

Sold

Once you've sold a coin, use the Sold inputs to enter the sold price and date.