EPTI want to start programming - Page 4
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pachi
Melbourne5338 Posts
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fusionsdf
Canada15390 Posts
On November 19 2008 21:45 clazziquai wrote: guys, how can i decide on something when i barely have ANY knowledge on what anything is? o.o the basics of programming will be similar across languages. You will find if statements, for loops, arrays in pretty much every language, and it looks like thats what you need to learn. So get a reference book, install java and play around. You can also look online at tutorials, but they generally wont be great. | ||
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artofmagic
United States1951 Posts
On November 19 2008 19:10 garista wrote: 1. Programming isn't just learning a language. It's about solving problems. So read a good book about algorithms and data structures. And learn to abstract. 2. (Especially) your first language should be clean and neither complicated nor too complex. I can't believe people actually recommend c++ as first language. 3. If you're dedicated enough (and you should be!), learn languages that have different concepts (procedural, object oriented, functional etc.). That will teach you a lot. (and everything deadbeef said.) wow. word. | ||
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b3h47pte
United States1317 Posts
On November 19 2008 21:45 clazziquai wrote: guys, how can i decide on something when i barely have ANY knowledge on what anything is? o.o OK, put the following programming languages into a bucket C/C++ Java Pascal C# VB .NET ASM and draw. if you get ASM, then i suggest you re-draw  Or you could just eenie meenie miney mo it ;\ | ||
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FreeZEternal
Korea (South)3396 Posts
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FreeZEternal
Korea (South)3396 Posts
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Elvin_vn
Vietnam2038 Posts
learn Java (not javascript, they are two completely different things) | ||
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0xDEADBEEF
Germany1235 Posts
If you choose to start out with Python, which is an even better choice, get the book "Learning Python" (by Mark Lutz + David Ascher, O'Reilly). This is a short book, tutorial-style... but really good quality (like all O'Reilly books). | ||
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0xDEADBEEF
Germany1235 Posts
It's a Ruby tutorial for (stupid? :D ) total beginners. It's kinda cute... if you want a dead simple tutorial your grandma could start out with, this is it. Don't expect a lot of info though. | ||
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Physician
United States4146 Posts
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Boonbag
France3318 Posts
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0xDEADBEEF
Germany1235 Posts
On November 21 2008 04:32 FreeZEternal wrote: People that keep saying Java is slow don't know anything about this language. Slow Java comes from bad design and bad programming (specially applets and Swing apps since you have to be very careful with Threads). Server side Java is very fast and efficient. I have worked in several production environments where Java (J2EE) was scaling incredibly well (something like ~1000 users per server.). And guess what, it was not the JVM being the bottleneck for the number of users, it was the Database and other external services used by the Main App. Yeah. Unfortunately though, myths or obsolete truths are very widespread in the IT realm and live on for a long time. "Java is slow" is one of them. "Windows is unstable" is another one (which obviously came from the 9x era). | ||
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gnuvince
Canada73 Posts
I want to address points made by some people here: I would recommend you C++ and HTML for beggining if you`re ambitious. If not then PHP + HTML is good too. Java is actually MUCH slower than C++ so it will propably never knock C++ out... so C++ is still more useful. I started learning C++ from various e-books (just use google), And don`t get dissappointed if you can`t get something reading it for the first time. Good luck! HTML is not a programming language, it's a markup language, a language used to format content. It's exactly like using Microsoft Word, except that instead of click a bold icon, you type the code in directly. C++ is a bad first language, because it is extremely complex and most beginners get completely lost with it. PHP is not bad to start with, however it is an extremely bad and retarded language that has no design. It will teach you bad habits. Java is not bad, but it's extremely verbose and boring and making complex things is way too complicated with it. As for its speed, it seems this user is unaware of recent improvements in Hotspot, or else he'd know that once started, a properly written Java program can match the speed of C++ in many cases (though not all.) Learning programming is usually quite boring unless there's something to motivate you. Like you're making games or useful applications. Well that's my opinion anyway, some people are fine spending hours learning syntax and algorithms. Heed this gentleman's warning: if you find yourself being totally bored, you probably shouldn't pursue the matter any further. So C++ is better to start off with? I'm confused D: No, it is definitely not better to start off with, because it will confuse you  It`s a bit harder but more useful imo. EDIT: And 99.9% of operating systems and games is made in C++ It's a lot harder and not really more useful except in a few select cases. As for operating systems, C++ is actually not that popular, C is a definite leader in this area. C++ is king for large games; a language like Python would allow you to write simpler 2D games much more easily. Python is by far the best language for learning how to program from scratch, but C/C++ is still by far the most used language. Java is also good starting language, but it really does so much for you that you'll miss out on a lot of stuff (its design philosophy is kinda weird) Python actually does a lot more for the programmer than Java does, and it needs to be understood that it is not a bad thing. You can always come back later to C to learn about topics such as memory management, pointers, and other lower level topics that are not part of Python (or Java). Learning C once you have a solid grasp of fundamental programming concepts is a lot easier than if you're trying to understand the design as well as understanding why a while loop does what it does. Ultimately, I want to learn C++. Why? In any case, learning on your own is EXTREMELY hard. Classes -> Internship is the way to go. It depends on the person. The classes I had in college were absolutely worthless. There is usually a point when things start to "click". Maybe a good class can bring about this moment sooner, but it's definitely possible to attain it on your own. Yup; now the question no one asked. What is it that you want to program? Depending on what you want to program is depending on where you should start. Knowing what one wants to do is definitely important in the selection of tools. But this should come after a proper knowledge of programming has been reached. A person may want to win the 100m dash, but before they do, they should probably learn to stand on two feet  I actually disagree with Python being the best language to learn from scratch. Sure, its easy to learn, but it cuts corners on some rules, such as formal type declarations. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be a little frustrating to move to another language (like C++ or Java) that's stricter about rules. IMO its much easier to learn a system thats strict on rules and transition to a loose one than vice versa. I disagree with your disagreement. Python is a terrific enabler, it allows a beginner programmer to quickly produce code to do practical things, to solve some of his own problems. Yeah, it's a bit looser than other languages, but that doesn't mean other languages can't be learned. If we went with strictness first, everybody would start coding in Haskell. I would actually recommend learning Perl. It's a powerful language that isn't all that difficult to learn compared to Java and C++. Also there's an excellent resource that I've used myself at: http://www.youtube.com/user/bermnz For the simple scripting tasks, Perl is not too hard to learn (although remembering default parameters for the built-in functions is a bitch.) However, once you get into more advanced topics, Perl shows some rot. I agree with what 0xDEADBEEF and garista said. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavour, for some people (myself included), programming is really fun, I hope you enjoy it. | ||
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