Where should i start if i wanna learn programming?? (1 Viewer)

[hurrotisrobbo]

Agreed. *Petitions for another banning, realises it will only fuel his ego.*

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Anyways, I started off with QBasic, VB, et al, and regretted it.

I'd suggest starting off with Python - it'll teach you OOP, and the code's clean to look at.

From there I suggest Java or C++, or if you're more into scripting, Perl.

 

[ErgoSum]

How about some actual advice

A lot of people recommend Bruce Eckels thinking in xxx (where xxx is one of {java,c++,python}). These books can either be bought in a store or there is a free electronic download here
http://mindview.net/Books.

If you are interested in web programming go with python, application programming go with java, i would leave c++ for later, learning python or java allow you to focus on algorithms and design patterns and not on memory allocation.
If you have a copy of visual studio.net, then learning .net wouldnt be a bad idea.. however visual studio is expensive whereas java and python can be aquired for free.

Another great idea is to do one of the courses from the mit opencourseware initiative, you might need to buy the text book but a lot of the courseware stuff has notes,video tapes of lectures, plus thats a great way to experience what uni is like.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrica...omputer-ProgramsFall2002/CourseHome/index.htm

is probably the one you would look at, and in fact the textbook for that is online so you wouldnt need anything more than to work through the materials.

learn to use linux/unix, or at least a command line, trust me these are important things to know. In some cases a gui is the best interfaces, in some cases a command line is, being familiar with both is useful. http://www.cygwin.com/ Cygwin is a unix-like enviroment you can install in windows, play with that

Once you know a bit of programming, try doing some challenges at www.topcoder.com and look at some of the solutions. The people who do well at topcoder are pretty smart.

 

[psycho_mushy]

Originally posted by Winston
PM if you have nothing productive to say then fuck out of this thread!

fuck programming...

its the hardest bloody thing to do...

takes me a page to write a simple program while it takes a geek to do the same thing in 2 sentences..

 

[Smurfwow]

Originally posted by ErgoSum

If you have a copy of visual studio.net, then learning .net wouldnt be a bad idea.. however visual studio is expensive whereas java and python can be aquired for free.

it sucks that .net has this false reputation.
.NET IS THE (equal) FREEST PLATFORM TO DEVELOP WITH, as in $0.

yes vs.net costs money, so what? that might be an issue if vs.net was the only .net ide, lucky for us it is'nt.

you can download the .net sdk for free http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...A6-3647-4070-9F41-A333C6B9181D&displaylang=en

and you can download the SharpDev IDE for free http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Download/GetFile.aspx?What=Setup

and sharpdev is a very robust, powerful IDE. personally i think its better than any java IDE i've seen.


I agree with your recommendations on mit opencourseware and topcoder.com. i had a quick browse through ocw when i first heard about it, and it was pretty bare. it's much bigger now though, an awesome resource.
and i paticipate in topcoder, its definatly a nice challenge

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by psycho_mushy
fuck programming...

its the hardest bloody thing to do...

takes me a page to write a simple program while it takes a geek to do the same thing in 2 sentences..

That's because you're stupid... full stop.

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by ErgoSum
A lot of people recommend Bruce Eckels thinking in xxx (where xxx is one of {java,c++,python}). These books can either be bought in a store or there is a free electronic download here
http://mindview.net/Books.

If you are interested in web programming go with python, application programming go with java, i would leave c++ for later, learning python or java allow you to focus on algorithms and design patterns and not on memory allocation.
If you have a copy of visual studio.net, then learning .net wouldnt be a bad idea.. however visual studio is expensive whereas java and python can be aquired for free.

Another great idea is to do one of the courses from the mit opencourseware initiative, you might need to buy the text book but a lot of the courseware stuff has notes,video tapes of lectures, plus thats a great way to experience what uni is like.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrica...omputer-ProgramsFall2002/CourseHome/index.htm

is probably the one you would look at, and in fact the textbook for that is online so you wouldnt need anything more than to work through the materials.

learn to use linux/unix, or at least a command line, trust me these are important things to know. In some cases a gui is the best interfaces, in some cases a command line is, being familiar with both is useful. http://www.cygwin.com/ Cygwin is a unix-like enviroment you can install in windows, play with that

Once you know a bit of programming, try doing some challenges at www.topcoder.com and look at some of the solutions. The people who do well at topcoder are pretty smart.

I never did java before, but yes... i think for a beginner going managed code is the best bet instead of learning all about memory management etc, starting off a little easy and understanding the concepts of OOP for application development can be quite good .

 

[...]

i dun think programming is the hardest thing to do..

i mean..my dad does programming, and all he is, is a hard hard worker..


u dun need an IQ of 150+ to manage programming...

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by ...
i dun think programming is the hardest thing to do..

i mean..my dad does programming, and all he is, is a hard hard worker..


u dun need an IQ of 150+ to manage programming...

Exactly, programming is just like maths, if you're not naturally good at it, the more you program and gain experience you'll get better but for some they only ever need to take a look at it once and can do it in a flash, everyone's different, but for PM's sake i don't think he can ever make it loading the IDE up.

 

[Fosweb]

Originally posted by ErgoSum
If you are interested in web programming go with python

There is only one problem with this: many hosts, unfortunately, dont support it...
I wrote some stuff which worked on my old host, switched, and had to redo in php...

You could use php... its supported everywhere...

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by Fosweb
There is only one problem with this: many hosts, unfortunately, dont support it...
I wrote some stuff which worked on my old host, switched, and had to redo in php...

You could use php... its supported everywhere...

Is python like being taken over or something or is it just plain old?

 

[hurrotisrobbo]

Originally posted by Smurfwow
it sucks that .net has this false reputation.
.NET IS THE (equal) FREEST PLATFORM TO DEVELOP WITH, as in $0.

Umm... You can't quite say it's the 'FREEST' language/'PLATFORM'... As far as Free-as-in-Beer goes, yes, it's equally as free as Python, Java, Perl, C++, C...

Free-as-in-Speech is another matter... .NET doesn't allow you to see how it's put together... With, say, Python or Perl, you can look behind the functions/APIs to:
a) See what it actually does, and not just rely on what the documentation says, or
b) Copy it and modify it to make an extra module, or
c) Help the developers with the language if you're so inclined.

You're not quite so free to do this with .NET. You can make extra modules if you wish, but you have to start from scratch, or rely on a third-party developer to give you a head-start.

Personally, I like being able to do whatever the frell I want with a language, hence my choice of Perl/Python (not the only free ones, I just like these two).

(Edit - I'm just curious... money-wise, how can something be the 'most free'? If it's $0, then it's free. You can't have degrees of 'freeness' ('freedom' is reserved for the other 'free').)

 

[Winston]

How about we come to a conclusion that .NET is a very very good RAD tool, i have to admit that, deploying applications is very fast, yeah it's true, we don't have access to see behind the properties and method for each namespace within the Common Base Libraries, but they have an extremely comprehensive set of them. But definately a excellent tool for managed code development.

 

[ErgoSum]

Fosweb
>>If you are interested in web programming go with python
>>There is only one problem with this: many hosts, >>unfortunately, dont support it...
>>I wrote some stuff which worked on my old host, switched, >>and had to redo in php...
Yeah, i understand i was just talking about which of Bruce Eckels books he should read, and seeing as the options are java, python, or c++ That being said php/perl are probably much better languages for web development but theres nothing wrong with python [besides the mandatory indenting but thats just my opinion].

Winston, python is younger than PERL im pretty sure.. but really they are designed for different purposes. I always thought of python as quite a young language.

Im glad to know there are other IDE's for .net, i wasnt sure about that whole thing since i dont use it. I do know that c# is aparently a pretty sexy language and a good one for beginners but so is java.

And well.. dont learn visual basic first, please...
Visual Basic is a great tool for certain applications, like doing RAD design of database appliactions for businesses and so on. But its not a great teaching language(despite its name) because it encourages sloppy coding and bad OO design. Although people can feel free to correct me about this because i hear VB.net is a very different beast. I dont think learning visual basic ruins a programmer for life, but it might teach him some bad habits which are best avoided in the first place.

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by ErgoSum

And well.. dont learn visual basic first, please...
Visual Basic is a great tool for certain applications, like doing RAD design of database appliactions for businesses and so on. But its not a great teaching language(despite its name) because it encourages sloppy coding and bad OO design. Although people can feel free to correct me about this because i hear VB.net is a very different beast. I dont think learning visual basic ruins a programmer for life, but it might teach him some bad habits which are best avoided in the first place.

Well lets just say that VB will just get users a motivated in starting development, yeah i guess VB6 and anything lower was bad because it wasnt even 50% OOP, but VB.NET yeah you got it right it's 100% OOP and is quite a nice language to program in, but obviously if you start off with VB you'll just get so lazy learning anything else and just get use to using the intellisense, and also if they move to a C language or whatever, they won't be use to having to be case specific, but yeah i like vb.net it's a nice language ...

 

[ErgoSum]

Eh and im pretty amused by J# , who says microsoft dont wanna kill off java

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by ErgoSum
Eh and im pretty amused by J# , who says microsoft dont wanna kill off java

Yeah same me, i haven't touched or read a bit about J# but most say it's Java's competitor, i always thought C# was Java's competitor.