Hey look. I'm ranting again. This was in a response on a forum
where someone wanted to know how to program.* The people were
vicious and mocking.* I might be wrong with my advice, but I
wanted to stand by the guy.* I don't like when people are
elitist about programming. It discourages people from trying.
[start rant] Such elitists. Just starting out? If you're on
Windows, get thinBASIC. a) It's FREE b) You can control ANYTHING
on your computer with it. c) You can write games with it. d)
There's a FLAT learning curve. e) It comes with an IDE that's
pleasant. The biggest mistake in today's programming environment
is the LANGUAGE is more complicated than the USER. "LOOK HERE'S
THIS OVERWHELMING BUNCH OF CRAP THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND N00B!
GO AWAY FROM THE WORLD OF PROGRAMMING NOW!" Stupid elitist
attitude I've seen among programming culture for ... freakin'
decades now. Get thinBASIC. There's something similar on Mac.
Something else similar on Linux. Start controlling your computer
with it. Make it do interesting things for you. Have it spam
1000 emails to your friends as you practice it. Once you've got
a few things under your belt that are INTERESTING and actually
DO SOMETHING YOU CARE ABOUT... then you can dive into whatever
the popular cross compiling, mega-super-library system you want
to. Or, use LUA. If you're on Steam, and Minecraft has
extensions, use LUA. I haven't used it, but I've heard it's not
hard. Most important thing with programming isn't "good form or
style". It's getting things to WORK. You can learn style later
or never, unless you just want to impress other people in the
programming community with your ability to CONFORM. PWAEFJ but
I'm not a conformist. Most clubs suck. I just want to make my
computer do stuff or make it do stuff for other people. I don't
care what language I have to use. You have to know what it does.
Hack your way through dozens or hundreds of sample files. The
demo has a picture of a bird? Change it to a picture of your
mom. Laugh. You learned something. That's the way to learn to
program. Not reading books and getting headaches. Unless you
like reading books and getting headaches. I like dive in and
MAKE something, even if it's a program that goes "DERP!"
everytime someone presses the D key. You can probably hook what
you wrote into other programs like Minecraft or whatever later
and if you can't, well then you'll have to learn another
language. But your first one shouldn't be discouraging.
Programming is fun. If it's not fun, well then you're trying to
please other people's and their opinions too much instead of
figuring out WHAT DO I WANT TO DO? [off soapbox]. I have the
kind of advice that's hated in the programmer community but I
never write* programs to impress peers.* I write programs to get
paid or to make my computer do something.* The social side of
programming wasn't my thing.* It has too much etiquette that's
too easy to break.
