Re: noob
Re: noob
- Subject: Re: noob
- From: Laurence Harris <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:27:50 -0500
On Dec 18, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Alastair Houghton wrote:
On 17 Dec 2007, at 02:53, draper jones wrote:
i'm a noob to programming. where should i begin to learn or what
book or books should i get????
You *might* be happier learning an interpreted language first,
perhaps Python or RealBASIC or something, just to get used to the
ideas behind programming, especially if you've never written any
programs before. Certainly interpreted languages are less daunting
and they have a faster turnaround, which makes it easier to learn.
They also have the merit that they generally don't crash outright,
and when something does go wrong you usually have better debugging
facilities available. I started with BASIC in the early 1980s, so
the idea of starting out with an interpreted language is one that I
have some familiarity with.
Otherwise I recommend:
1. Learn ANSI C. *Not* C++, and not Objective-C (not straight
away, anyway). **MAKE SURE** that you understand pointers, strings
and arrays because those are the things people have most trouble
with and they're actually very straightforward when you understand
them. If you're confident writing e.g. a program that can read ten
numbers from the terminal and print the largest, smallest,
arithmetic mean, mode, etcetera, it will stand you in good stead
for Objective-C. I think the importance of being able to write
simple *non-graphical* programs like this is often understated.
2. (For the Mac) Learn Objective-C and Cocoa. Because ObjC is a
*thin* wrapper over ANSI C, you'll find the new concepts easy to
pick up. If you try to learn ObjC first, you may find that you
don't understand the basics of C, which will cause you problems in
some areas.
3. If you want, learn C++. C++ can be useful sometimes, and many
Mac developers use it extensively in their apps. But make no
mistake; C++ is an unpleasantly complicated language that isn't
even understood by most of its practitioners. While it is
undeniably powerful and sometimes very useful, I would be inclined
to avoid it where possible. If you want to work on Windows
programs, you'll probably need basic C++ know-how (or, for some
newer software, C#). On the Mac, it isn't really necessary to
learn C++ straight away. You'll find C++ easier to learn after
ObjC because many of the OO concepts from ObjC exist in C++ also in
one form or another.
Draper hasn't said what his programming goals are, and without
knowing what he wants to do it seems like it would be hard to advise
him on languages. If he's interested in Unix or generic programming,
Obj-C doesn't seem like a good direction. If he's looking toward
getting a programming job, C++ is a widely used language and isn't
that hard to learn at the basic levels. If you want to be a guru on
every aspect of it you have some serious learning ahead, but you
don't need most of it to be able to write software using it. Why
hasn't anyone asked the OP what kind of software he wants to write
eventually? Or did I miss that?
[OT] Why would someone want an e-mail address like "sexyman11780?" LOL
Larry
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| References: | |
| | >noob (From: draper jones <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: noob (From: Alastair Houghton <email@hidden>) |