Today's Programming Languages

Posted by wiredbomb0 on May 19, 2007, 3:40 a.m.

Many people find that learning a programming language is too hard. They often want to being with the hardest first, but programming isnt something that can be learnt over night.

I remember borrowing "Visual Basic .NET for dummies" and take about 1 month to read it all and do the examples. Even then, I couldn't FULLY understand it.

Now after about 6 months, i fully understand most things (about 95%) but if i try and move forward (c++) i find it too hard, but VB is to easy.

If you were going to start to learn a programming language, i would recommend starting off with Visual Basic. you can download from www.microsoft.com then move onto BASIC (i would use darkBASIC) then do something like HTML or Java.

Find out what you like doing, then go futher in that direction.

Or you could stick with GML lol

Note: First Blog =)

Comments

stampede 16 years, 11 months ago

Heh, I remember when I first started to learn some coding, about a 2 or 3 years ago. Guess what the language was? Visual Basic ;) Well, after a while I've found that VB was ugly and not so useful language. There was some languages between GM and VB, but I have now settled to GM. I don't have energy to always code one game idea from scratch… All the graphic-loading systems and so on…

But there will be a day when I'll write games from scratch I think ;)

Evilish 16 years, 11 months ago

All depends on the person really, I moved straight from GM to C++, and it all seemed pretty same to me(though 39dll was really what taught me about datatypes)

darkBasic is horrible, I hated it -_- same said with ActionScript.

punch cards FTW

biggoron 16 years, 11 months ago

I wouldn't recommend any BASIC, but that's just because I hate BASIC.

OL 16 years, 11 months ago

Quote:
punch cards FTW

Hardcore.

Arcalyth 16 years, 11 months ago

Uhh, no, VB sucks and will always suck, you will learn terrible programming practices.

HTML isn't code, it's markup. PHP is a really good starter though.

No programming language is really all that hard to learn if you have patience. You just need to get API references and know which libraries to use, etc. Then you need to know how to use your IDE or compiler/linker.

Java takes a lot of the "hard" parts of C++ out, such as memory management. You can use just notepad/vi/nano/etc for writing code, javac for compiling it, and java for running it.

In PHP, you just embed it with HTML, so all you need is notepad and a server. It's pretty simple to learn because of the in-depth documentation.

C/C++ I haven't really tackled as of yet (lack of patience/time), but you just need to Google some libraries that do what you want, learn how to efficiently manage memory, and for C++ learn OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) concepts (Java is great for this).

BASIC is pretty much dead now. Use a decent language or be forever be doomed to bad coding conventions.

[deleted user] 16 years, 11 months ago

Ugh, I tried to learn Visual Basic not too long ago, after I was familiar with GM. I hated it, and I still do.

I'm starting to move onto C++ now, straight after GM, and it doesn't seem too hard, yet.

Many people I know give up with learning languages because they find that you can't just do something like;

"Move player with keyboard keys"

Or make games in a matter of a few minutes.

Real Programmers use Fortran.

DevonX 16 years, 11 months ago

I've got HTML, GML, CSS [=P], and C++ mastered.

I know quite a bit of javscript, and vb.

I've also just scatched at asp, php, delhpi, and idk…..

OL 16 years, 11 months ago

I agree that VB is pretty sucky, but it's excellent for people to learn to program in. That along with GM, but then they should move on to 'real' languages!

Dragonos 16 years, 11 months ago

Mastered huh. Prove it. Dark basic is OK but Java is fun and what Nintendo uses.

(Zelda was made with java)

Arcalyth 16 years, 11 months ago

Quote:
Java is fun and what Nintendo uses.

(Zelda was made with java)

Where did you get that crock of bullshit? You don't see Sun Microsystems anywhere in the credits for anything. Java is proprietary. Nintendo definitely does NOT use Java. The Wii does NOT have a Java VM (We would be able to use it in the browser otherwise). Java is too slow and bulky for making big games like Zelda.