----------------------------------- Malakia Mon Jan 23, 2012 9:15 pm Starting New In Programming Land [TUTORIAL] ----------------------------------- First thing is first. I am not here to teach you how to program a video game or teach you how to program an mmorpg. I am here to simply provide all the information I wish I learnt before I started programming to you right now. Lets start by telling you a secret :) WebGL.. ever heard of it? If not go check it out right now you will like it. Anyways you dont have to its just an idea. Now lets get started here. This may be long I don't know yet and I didn't get permission so it may be taken down too and only few may read it but deal with it!!! Seriously no harsh feelings your going to need to teach yourself to keep on reading because programming is not something you pick up in 1 week. 1. BUY A BOOK AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!!! -- Now don't get me wrong these forums are super helpful and everything. But I'm tired of seeing these 10 year old's asking if they should do C/++ PERL LUA ect... YOUR 10 YOU HAVE LOADS OF TIME!!! to further explain that without confusion DO SOMETHING ... let me say that again DO SOMETHING!!! the best thing you could ever do in your situation is just do go out buy a book. 2. STOP SAYING YOU CAN'T BECAUSE (stupid excuse here) -- This one is super important... It's just like homework you know? You tell your mom your going to do your homework and then you go player COD/BF. Where in programming you have these excuses like; - I can't afford the books I will wait until I get a job - I don't have the time of day and so many more but I dont want this to be 10000000 lines. First thing is first: http://www.cplusplus.com/files/tutorial.pdf (this is not my site and I do not own it) see that little thing at the end of this link? here let me point it our (.PDF!!!) and there are tons.. I dont want to go further into this topic because I hear people giving this advice to much and if you can't take it and need 1000 tutorials to understand I might as well make you go read another to get it threw your brain. 3. STOP LEARNING SYNTAX AND LEARN TO PROGRAM -- You may be thinking "Wait isn't that the same thing?" my answer and everyone else's who knows how to program = NO!!!! Learning to program and learning the syntax are two different things and I will be glad to explain it because I know good programmers who think that I am wrong about this but hey.. we all have our own opinions right? lets start with a code example because I believe visual is more important than to read. if (condition) { code to be executed if condition is true } This is javascript .. if (condition) code to be executed if condition is true; This is PHP .. Now you may be thinking wth this is so stupid what is he doing and let me explain. Those are two different if statements and both are similar. you can look at this as a way to learn code .. or a way to learning PHP/JAVASCRIPT right way to look at it: - IF (See if understand what if means and learn how to use it [JUST LEARN HOW TO USE IT NOT HOW TO TYPE IT] wrong way to look at it: - if (condition) code to be executed if condition is true; ok cool so it goes if then I need to go (condition) and not like javascript but this one I keep going and end with ; .. you may think its acceptable but It bugs me when someone says "In what language?" when I tell them a programming tip :P Basically the best way to learn to program is like this. 1- Take the code 2- Block everything clear of syntax of this language 3- open up notepad 4- make your cool epic program WITHOUT CODE (watch:) if person types w then put some text on the screen reading "Hello World" try and make it nice too its always a good idea to learn the right way the first time if person types w then put some text on the screen reading "helloworld" end if now what you want to do is program this in only now your going to use your language. Then you will go threw your lines ex: 01 if person types w 02 then 03 put some text on the screen reading "helloworld" 04 end if and randomly choose one line and tell yourself what it means. Keep doing that and teach yourself and keep teaching yourself it will help you become a better programmer. btw thats VOODO code basically just means not real code. (THIS ISN'T JUST FOR LEARNING THIS WILL HELP YOU PROGRAM OUT EVERYTHING BETTER TRUST ME! TRY IT) 4. FORUMS :D -- If you get stuck and it's too hard for you don't think you can't do it!! there are so many forums out there like this one and Gamedev.net