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+--- Thread: Learning to program! (/thread-1351.html)
Learning to program! - Spidermy9 - 11-10-2013
Hello guys Spidermy9 here also known as api...
I really wanna learn to program but im not quite shure how to start.
I do know batch, were i have programmed textgames, movies you name it. even made a program for my schools computer so that the user can shift IP adress and make the computer think its on without anyone logged on, so it cant do anything... xD (yesh i am rolling that thug life).....
Morts Javascript seems as an exelent choice, but how to learn it? i do use mac so can i even use it on there? Thx for the help!
RE: Learning to program! - David - 11-10-2013
Javascript is a scripting language, nothing wrong with that. But as you already know batch and understand the basic concept of programming I think it's a better choice to go with a more complicated language such as C, C++ or Java. There are a bunch of tutorials on youtube. I suggest thenewboston's videos on C++ or java.
RE: Learning to program! - xdot - 11-10-2013
First things first, the OS doesn't really matter.
Now, avoid Java. It will teach you a terrible way of thinking - and generally bad practices ( http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/java.html / http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/java2.html ). C/C++ would be ideal but of course it has a long and steep learning curve. Javascript, on the other hand, is friendly enough and almost every browser supports it. I would, however, recommend python as it's "an easy to learn, powerful programming language".
C++ Resources:
http://www.learncpp.com/
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/
Javascript Resources:
http://www.w3schools.com/js/
Python Resources:
http://docs.python.org/3.3/tutorial/
RE: Learning to program! - Spidermy9 - 11-10-2013
Thx for the reply! i saw davids first and started on c++ wich i had played around with a little before (only hello world xD) its pretty great and will propaly finish my first crappy program soon
will consider python afterwards 
RE: Learning to program! - mort96 - 11-10-2013
I would suggest JavaScript instead of Python.
Python is a great language, better than JS in many ways. However, it's not so easy to actually make it ..do anything. You can give it some text, do some calculations on said input, and output some text. Making it give you visual feedback is hard - you'll have to get into graphics libraries and such. C/C++ and Java (don't do Java kids) is much the same.
With JS on the other hand, you got this whole HTML environment around you. You can make some elements in HTML and do various stuff with them - move them around, change their style, display text in them - from the JS code. It's also dead simple to make a button which runs a JS function when it's clicked (<button onclick="foobar()">Click me!</button> will run the foobar javascript function every time it's clicked). If you need to get more advanced, JS scales nicely with the graphics APIs canvas and WebGL.
As opposed to most other languages, you don't need a compiler. You don't need an IDE. You don't need a special runtime. All you need is a text editor and a somewhat updated browser. Make an index.html file, write some code and drag it into your browser, and it works. (tequilaJumper is exactly that, one index.html file, most of which was made in Notepad in boring school classes.) Of corse, when you get slightly more advanced, spreading your scripts over more files is possible.
So that's why I suggest going for JS.
RE: Learning to program! - David - 11-10-2013
But I like java D:
RE: Learning to program! - Spidermy9 - 11-10-2013
But mort dont you need to know html and other stuff like that to learn javascript?
RE: Learning to program! - mort96 - 11-10-2013
you don't have to, you can get pure JS interpreters, which doesn't have anything to do with HTML. Node.js is an example of that. HTML is extremely simple to get the gist of tho, and really expands what you can do right off the bat without getting into complex things.
RE: Learning to program! - Xray_Doc - 11-11-2013
I like Java as well and just started it, don't listen to these guys. If you have absolutely no idea where to start programming, I would start with Java and work onto other program languages later. Take it from someone who started programming 2 months ago.
RE: Learning to program! - Chibill - 11-11-2013
Or start in C because java has C like syntex.