noob programming

[wozzizname]

I'm in a similar position to the OP, and have started working with BlueJ and the book 'Objects First With Java'. It seems a lot easier to get to grips with than other material I've looked at and I'd recommend it for other beginners

 

[MNuTz]

well thanks for all the replies, and sorry for not getting back sooner (work stuff)

I think im going to go off, and google each language in turn, then look at the basics and see which i understand best or get to grips with the quickest. Then i shall be back with loads of questions

 

[Conrad11]

Visual Basic.NET is easy IMO.

As is PHP if you like web stuff.

Is just the case of getting used to to syntax that you can just search for a tutorial on what you want or for a function.

 

[regulus]

well thanks for all the replies, and sorry for not getting back sooner (work stuff)

I think im going to go off, and google each language in turn, then look at the basics and see which i understand best or get to grips with the quickest. Then i shall be back with loads of questions

If you're serious, then look at this website for .NET

http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/.

or, for c++

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_dl_tr.php

They feed you just enough before deciding if you want to subscribe or not. I subscribe to both and both are well worth it. Cost me less than buying some book or reading some tutorial of the Net i can't decipher.

 

[PinkPig]

I would have to say that in my opinion most "teach yourself xxx in x days" books out there (and everything like them) are pretty rubbish. Even when they're not littered with mistakes, there's too much emphasis on listing every feature of a fairly complicated development environment, then setting inane exercises like "Change the name of this text box to...", rather than actually giving any sort of guide to teaching you what you might want to do with the language.

I would suggest trying to find a particular aim or project - even if it's something fairly simple - to get yourself going with. That way, even if you can't find any magical resource, you can learn whatever you need to get it working, which is probably the most interesting way to learn. On the other hand, there's more chance of you picking up bad habits.

Incidentally, I've just finished the first term of a Computer Science degree, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well the introduction to computer science course (one part of the first term) was taught - we were learning ML, which is of course not remotely a language that anyone's likely to have come across before or use in industry - but the teaching was based around real little exercises that actually needed some thought, and I found it very interesting indeed and came away feeling that I'd learnt something useful.

One thing I might just about recommend - at least as something fairly different - is BlueJ and "Objects First with Java: A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ" (the book). BlueJ is a Java environment which shows objects visually and gets rid of everything that's complicated about most IDEs and languages, and lets you get right on with learning the language. I think it's a useful and interesting tool (BlueJ itself is available for free, the book is readily available) - obviously not a direct route to practical programming, but a good way to learn in my opinion.

 

[celliott]

Pascal is an excellent teaching language (as it should be, that's what it was designed for!) as it keeps things simple and forces you into good programming habbits. It's a little long in the tooth now but for foundation level procedural programming (learning about data-types / control structures / etc) there isn't much better.

I would never advise someone to dive straight into OO because it's a lot to grasp when you don't even have the basics nailed down.

I agree completely, have been using Pascal in College for a few basic apps. Very easy to get to grips with and Im starting to do a bit of C when I go back next Jan

 

[Una]

Incidentally, I've just finished the first term of a Computer Science degree, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well the introduction to computer science course (one part of the first term) was taught - we were learning ML, which is of course not remotely a language that anyone's likely to have come across before or use in industry - but the teaching was based around real little exercises that actually needed some thought, and I found it very interesting indeed and came away feeling that I'd learnt something useful.

I agree with this totally however teaching a functional programming language in an academic setting is fine. I think that something like ML/Haskell/Scheme should be taught as a first language there because lets face it a lot of people have past programming experience before they start CS and with those languages everyone starts off at an equal grounding.

One thing I might just about recommend - at least as something fairly different - is BlueJ and "Objects First with Java: A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ" (the book). BlueJ is a Java environment which shows objects visually and gets rid of everything that's complicated about most IDEs and languages, and lets you get right on with learning the language. I think it's a useful and interesting tool (BlueJ itself is available for free, the book is readily available) - obviously not a direct route to practical programming, but a good way to learn in my opinion.

This is where I disagree, Blue-J is a horrible way to learn object orientated programming. Some of the students I know did not know the alternatives or how to compile/run from the command line/jar's. Not to mention the fact Blue-J allows you to run programs without writing a main method.... Then people think all they need to do is invoke method on objects by clicking on them

I think to start with people are best off with a text editor with syntax highlighting (vim/emacs etc..) Then once they get the hang of that they can move onto the better IDE's with a decent debugger, IntelliJ/Eclipse.


Your right about the teach your self programming in 24 hour books, they are useless.
http://norvig.com/21-days.html

P.S Are you at Cambridge then? Don't know many places that teach ML in first year

 

[DAVEM]

The first language I learnt was C++ back when I was 13, some 10 years ago, which I found very straight forward, even then. Now having learnt a myriad of programming langs I'd have to recommend learning something like Perl, a nice and easy scripting language. With a little training (I recon I could teach the basics in 2 days) you can do some really powerful work. Nothing more annoying that spending three weeks learning something like C++ your not far past the "Hello World" app.


Then move on to Java. I'm actually quite a recent convert, but again it's quite a simple. The idea of doing Perl first is to excite you about what you can do, then your much more motivated to really try at Java.

Just my opnion,

David

 

[arty]

Yeah from scratch but I already knew 5 other languages and about 10 years Win32 API experience prior to learning it. I guess that may have some bearing on it

...and (just to chip in), I think the real skill of using .net as a platform comes in knowing all of the libraries inside out. The actual language of C# is fairly simplistic, or so I found when I picked it up. I've just been forced into learning VB6 (legacy application support at work) and it has taken me something like 2 months - and that's without feeling at all confident about knowing everything

I'd suggest C# too, firstly the procedural basics and then moving onto OO concepts ASAP

arty

 

[daven1986]

i say use java. make a realllllllllllllly simple program at first that maybe just adds two numbers. then start to add stuff to it, start to modularise it and you'll learn as you go

also it has tons of online support


daven

 

[n3crius]

Pascal is an excellent teaching language (as it should be, that's what it was designed for!) as it keeps things simple and forces you into good programming habbits. It's a little long in the tooth now but for foundation level procedural programming (learning about data-types / control structures / etc) there isn't much better.

I would never advise someone to dive straight into OO because it's a lot to grasp when you don't even have the basics nailed down.

it's a great way to learn. however i'd imagine it's hard for many to start with that when they want to jump straight into OO. i don't know if i'd have gone with it if it hadn't been pushed at me in education. so glad it was though, what a beauty she is.

 

[JIMA]

I'd go for Pascal too. It's a nice language to learn with. Also consider C which teaches the basics well e.g flow, datatypes etc. but does stretch the ol' grey matter and patience at times.

One thing about OO is that until you've got the basics of procedural code down it's hard to see the benefits (or pitfalls) of using OO. I'd start simple and leave the OO stuff out until you've got the basics. Then when you do learn OO you'll get much more out of it.