I have been interested in programming for a very long time and I feel like it would compliment my mechanical/electrical projects nicely, not to mention open up a whole new field to me.
I am currently a complete noob, more or less, when it comes to the field and so I was wondering if T&T had any recommendations for starting out and teaching yourself how to program.
Thank you!
Comments
If your interested in web development HTML and JavaScript aren't hard to learn at all. I don't know PHP myself, but it doesn't look like it would be very challenging either.
If your wanting to write applications and get jobs.. learning C++, Java, and Visual Basic would all be necessary.
I've never used or tried to learn Ruby or Python myself, but I've constantly read about how user friendly they are and how easy they are to learn.
You might want to start by researching and few languages and figuring out what you want to learn first.. then start checking for forums, tutorials, source code, etc. There aren't many coders here but I'm sure there are plenty of people who can share links or point you in the right direction.
http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp
To duuude: I somewhat want some general knowledge. Website design would be a great skill and designing my own apps would also be great, so I suppose both sides of that coin. Mostly I would like to be able to work with programmable machines and robots.
I'd definitely be interested in learning a web design language or two.
There are some fantastic tutorials on the following websites...
http://www.w3schools.com/
http://www.tizag.com/
For anything else, give me a shout and I'll see what I can do.
This should be a good introduction.
http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-1.html
If you are interested in learning ruby, this is the book to read.
This book also is a great place to start, as it helps you start thinking like a programmer.
Here's something I programmed a while back. It's a robot with an ultrasound eye, it turns when it's <15cm away from something.
Best friend. http://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/HomePage
If you're running Windows, download and install Wampserver. It's an Apache webserver with PHP and MySQL installed already.
If you're on Linux, then check out my tutorial on setting up a webserver.
Also, you're going to want a decent program in which you can write your code. Forget all that Dreamweaver bullshit and download Notepad++. It's an open source text editor which supports many different programming languages, and should help you out a lot.
Good luck!
From my experience I think this is the way to start if you're a complete n00b like me. I started out doing HTML 10 years ago when the net was still young, fresh, and easy. Moved quickly into Javascript and CSS because you quickly realize how limited HTML is (lol) that you have to. PHP was still kind of new, a little confusing but not as bad as JS it seemed so I never got into it and I'm now trying to pick up some SQL/Database programming since that will probably benefit me the most in my career. I've forgot a lot of shit I once knew though, that's the problem with programming in general. If you don't use it you will lose it over time and in large chunks.
I've tried a half dozen beginner Java, C#, C, C++ books and it seems to move from very basic and detailed as to what's happening, then out of nowhere shit just goes in directions you can't keep up with or at least in my case. I wish I was a kid where I had the time, energy, and will to sit around and play with shit but as an adult time is critical and I find it very hard to keep up trying to learn it all now. Maybe someone can offer me tips as well as to how they fully picked up programming, routes taken, etc.
Oh god man, fucking this.
I go through phases of wanting to code and not wanting to code. This happens over large periods of time, so I'll often stop for a few months and then come back to it later on. I end up forgetting a whole load of it, although it's easier to pick up again second time around.
Keep it up, especially if you're new to it. Otherwise you'll forget it all.
It's a scripting 'language' so no compiling and you get instant results.
I never managed to get my head around python. Well, I started up using it and thought something like "this is retarded" and just gave up there and then.
Thanks man. I downloaded the stuff you recommended. I'm hoping I'll be able to look over some of this stuff tonight sometime.
Good to know. I'm a little ways off from that, haha, but I will remember that when I get there.
I'm just now getting the hang of html. :facepalm: