HELP!

[Emperor Wilbers]

So, I am in a desperation to learn to program/code/whatever and it is unbearable. Can someone either post some guides or lead me to a site that would help, please. I don't care if it is python, C++, or whatever program, I just want to learn.

[Hasabushi]

Welcome to the world of frustration and head scratching, then one day it just clicks :D  Programming is something that you have to keep doing till you get a feel for it, I would recommend Visual Basic, there is a version that you can download for free. Then you will need to get a few good books, I recommend The Visual series for VB2010 or VB.net.  You can also find tons of tutorials online both video and text.

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/express -- For the express software

[Emperor Wilbers]

The only thing I know is the Hello World program, lol. Thanks so much!  (panda)

[lightspeed15]

If you want to learn Java, I once got a bunch of "Programming with Java for Dummies" books and they were really amazing, and I was coding basic mathematical functions and whatnot! That was last year's summer. I forgot EVERYTHING and I returned those books to their owner so....

well I recommend getting those books for Java which is a very useful coding language in my opinion.

[mrlemke]

If you want to code for the project, find a copy of Visual Basic 6 somehow since it looks like that's what we will be doing it in.

If you just want to learn how to program for any other reason, stay away from Visual Basic and Java. Stay away from "... for dummies!" and "learn ... in X days!" books. These are for code monkeys who don't care to understand their code, merely have something that will output shit. If you want to go that route, that's fine. Most of what I have to say won't really help you though so just stop reading now. :p

If you want to program and master the craft, start with Python. In my experience (and this isn't to knock on Java or Visual Basic guys), smarter people like and use Python. That's not to say there are no smart Java or Visual Basic guys, merely that Python coders (the ones who like using it) typically are smarter.

Since I ruled out the for dummies and X days books, I'll let you know some good material to start with. Use the documentation on Python's website (there's also Learn Python the Hard Way, but I think he was using broken code for the version he has you install). Yeah, it may difficult to read at first, but keep coding and trying to understand what you are doing. And it'll click, the time is different for everyone, but you'll click and then you'll be writing code like a Python ninja.

This is from personal experience. I actually clicked with C (although I never use C, Python is just so much faster to get stuff done with). I never clicked with Java or Visual Basic. It didn't do anything for me. Visual Basic especially as I just learned how to build GUIs and not really write any code. Java because it's incredibly ugly and the material I could find was just crap that turns you into a code monkey.

The reason I didn't recommend C is because the memory management, which is what you will end up doing in a lot of C coding, can be difficult to grasp. So, after learning Python, I would suggest C (or Lisp, you should learn both at SOME point though).

Also, I'm not saying don't learn Visual Basic or Java. Just not to learn programming. Visual Basic is the best RAD (rapid application development) tool for graphical applications in Windows and Java allows for an easy method of cross-platform coding while still having an executable file (unlike Python or Ruby, which you are stuck in releasing scripts unless you monkey around with third party tools).

If you need any help, just let me know.

[Emperor Wilbers]

Ok, thanks. I will start with Python, and move to other things. I have VB2010 downloaded so I can just move to it when I want to. Thanks guys.

[Hasabushi]

Okay I totally agree with Dan, I wasn't thinking about it from a programmers standpoint, probably should've been a given. Now you've finally given me the kick I need to jump into python again.  I will say this that VB still has a place in my heart as GWBASIC and Commodore Basic were my first every programming languages, if you don't count Assembly.

[Emperor Wilbers]

I have a question. I am an ABSLUTE beginner and I don't ncessarily know what programming really is or what it does. Canyou tell me the difference between different programming languages and what they all do or what they are used for?

[mrlemke]

Programming languages are used to talk to the computer in a human readable format. It's a lot easier to read something like:

Code Select Expand

c = a + b

than:

Code Select Expand

000000 00001 00010 00110 00000 100000

Disclaimer: The above code is from Wikipedia and from what I understand does roughly the same as the code prior to it.

Differences in programming languages are usually in syntax (like grammer) and paradigm (style).

Syntax can be incredibly minimal (such as Lisp) or incredibly verbose (such as BASIC), or anywhere in between.

The major paradigms are functional, logical, imperative, and object-oriented. Most languages used today support a mixture of paradigms, typically imperative and object-oriented, although there is more functional support being added in many languages lately.

Languages can be designed to do different things, although some are also designed to be general use. For example, Perl was designed for report processing and is really good at processing text. On the other hand, Visual Basic was designed to create graphical applications quickly and as such you can get working prototypes of graphical software created a lot faster than other languages.

As such, it's best to learn multiple languages and use the right language for the right job.

[Emperor Wilbers]

Thanks! That clears up a lot of questions.