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Read This First: Learning How to Program

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m0skit0
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by m0skit0 »

Actually, requests are forbidden by the rules.
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Yosh
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by Yosh »

m0skit0 wrote:Give it a couple of years.
are you kind of joking ^^
he could achieve such a thing way faster (with some motivation that is)
years aren't needed to code some C and retrieve weather from the web, it's possible in a couple of months seriously
with a couple of years way more than just that would be possible
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m0skit0
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by m0skit0 »

Without any previous programming knowledge and on PSP? You're actually underestimating your ignorance when you didn't know how to program. Anyway it obviously depends on how much time you put into it. If you put 6h/day, maybe two months will be enough if you learn fast (which is not the case for 90% of people regarding C). But most likely, you're not going to put 6h/day for it. If you can hold a couple of hours when starting, that would be a miracle.

I've been teaching programming for university students for several years, so I definitely know what I'm talking about here. Even such people, who got 2h of programming per day plus extra hour with me on the afternoon still got a mediocre programming level (and I'm talking about Pascal which is easier to learn than C) and would never been able to program for PSP at the end of the year (and most of them even would not at the end of their second year, trust me).

Look that I'm talking about learning to program, not being "guided" (aka copy-pasting code) by other people.
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Yosh
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by Yosh »

well you don't know when I personally started programming, and I don't know how in the world it'd be possible to program with copy-pasting
yeah sure well personally I got fond of it by the day I started and spent the more time I could doing it since then (I even lack sleep sometimes because of it)
Big block ^^
I started learning C on my own during January this year, whenever I had time and when I had free time before class, and finished maybe 2-3 weeks later (but still needed to pratice then)
I learned using the SDL on pc first and then ported the game my tutorial was explaining to the psp with the SDL
I lost lots of time because of the numerous bugs encountered with the psp's SDL and because of the numerous bugs that came up when compiling, the minimalist pspsdk is far from perfect but works great when we find how (the 10.0 version solved all my pbs)
anyway I finished porting it in the beginning of March (see or google cache) and then improved it and finally ported it all on the oslib to avoid most SDL bugs on the psp (again I lost lots of time trying to fix these bugs / searching another library)
I still lost much time with some oslib bugs lol but later found a way to avoid them
then I wanted to make my own game-project just for the sake of participating in the pspgenesis and found an idea but was already sick of the psp so I didn't want to make it anymore, but some people told me to do it and so I wrote my Lightning (lol I thought this thing to be the fastest to program as possible)
yeah well at school I always get bored as I'm a fast learner and most of the time I have top marks just by listening in class
I didn't learn Pascal as I think C is more useful

Then after the competition I Iearned most of C++ in one single evening, aka maybe 12h in a row I don't know exactly
now I only lack a few specific things I don't need yet about C++ pointers / dynamic tables but I could finish it with not so much time when I want
Then I learned how to use JGE++ thinking it was so good for the psp but found out it still had much bugs, even wololo's modified one for features not used by Wagic (see)
So instead I trained by programming a Qt pc Gui

This time I'm finishing learning basis in x86 asm, but realize lots of experience is needed to reverse engineer programs so I'm taking my time
Then I'll continue learning Haskell for functional programming, as I started this in April when a teacher told me C / C++ are kinda out-dated languages

Anyway that's just to say programming's really easy it's just a matter of beginning to learn one language to get started, if we got some motivation ^^
But lots of people have way more pbs learning it I know lol maybe they aren't that motivated no idea
I don't like the way everybody mystifies lots of things, saying "This is so hard" or whatever, because often when I get to try it out it just turns out I can do it easily (excepted for really complicated things requiring experience / hard work ^^)
I don't mean to upset anyone or anything sorry if I did, I just mean people willing to program shouldn't let go so easily
because I did that mistake before, trying to learn C from some boring book and it was way more difficult than on a computer, and I didn't even had time to learn how loops are magic things (got bored before)
m0skit0
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by m0skit0 »

Yosh wrote:I started learning C on my own during January this year, whenever I had time and when I had free time before class, and finished maybe 2-3 weeks later (but still needed to pratice then)
Without having practicing a programming language ever before? You must be some kind of genius then.
Yosh wrote:anyway I finished porting it in the beginning of March
So if I understood correctlty, you didn't know a thing about programming but you started learning programming on January, made a game using SDL on PC, ported it to PSP, lost time with PSP's SDL bugs, and finished in the beginning of March? Wow, you must be some kind of genius then.
Yosh wrote:I Iearned most of C++ in one single evening, aka maybe 12h in a row I don't know exactly
So you didn't even know OOP and learned most of C++ in one single evening? Wow, you must be some kind of genius then.
Yosh wrote:This time I'm finishing learning basis in x86 asm
Already got there? Nice then, although I'm kind of disappointed you didn't reverse engineer Windows on a couple of hours.
Yosh wrote: a teacher told me C / C++ are kinda out-dated languages
Give him a slap and send him here. Just FYI, most games are written in C++, and almost all (if not all) operating systems are written 90% in C. C/C++ is most likely fastest language out there. So no, they're not out-dated. They're just old.
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Yosh
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by Yosh »

m0skit0 wrote:Without having practicing a programming language ever before? You must be some kind of genius then.
nope I just learned maple programming in class about the month before and then practiced algorithmic with funny not too hard math pbs on http://projecteuler.net/ as my teacher said it's a good idea (see ^^)
m0skit0 wrote:So if I understood correctlty, you didn't know a thing about programming but you started learning programming on January, made a game using SDL on PC, ported it to PSP, lost time with PSP's SDL bugs, and finished in the beginning of March? Wow, you must be some kind of genius then.
well I don't think maple algorithmic is so much programming, and I ported this game so didn't make it, it was just to learn
m0skit0 wrote:So you didn't even know OOP and learned most of C++ in one single evening? Wow, you must be some kind of genius then.
I learned the way C++ works but never made OOP with it yet, it's kinda useless for the Gui I made and so what it is is only what's so called 'bad C++ programming' until I make smthg where OOP could be useful
Anyway learning a language isn't what makes a person masterize it, to do so much experience is required, same goes for C
some additional possibilities added with C++ aren't so much to learn, the harder part is certainly to catch the OOP good habits I'd say, what I did not yet, I didn't need it anyway
m0skit0 wrote:Already got there? Nice then, although I'm kind of disappointed you didn't reverse engineer Windows on a couple of hours.
I said ' basis in x86 asm' and am just talking about that
This document's far from being able to teach all asm by itself naturally, and is just some kinda introduction
Information is available anywhere, any random person could open an asm introduction and start reading it, that's why they're introductions made to be understood by anybody
m0skit0 wrote:Give him a slap and send him here. Just FYI, most games are written in C++, and almost all (if not all) operating systems are written 90% in C. C/C++ is most likely fastest language out there. So no, they're not out-dated. They're just old.
I do know about all of that, why do you think exactly I chose C / C++ lol
He said it's not because they're popular that they're so good, even if they have their own strong points, but I think he just didn't express properly what he meant
He's just a functional programming freak I'd say ^^ but that makes me want to try out functional programming

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Strangelove
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by Strangelove »

that's m0skit0's modus operandi for you. :D
i kind of like it actually, but it takes an Englishman to truly master sarcasm.

if anything i guess he was implying ignorance on your part. i knew a guy too who borrowed a book from me and claimed to have learned C++ in one day. (he knew a bit C and programming from earlier) this when i go *facepalm*... it just sounds too unbelievably ignorant to say it as if he know everything there is to know about the subject, when in reality he just grasped the very basics of OOP. A small part of a much larger whole.

and sure take C89 for instance, there's only 32 keywords to it, and memorizing how each work is doable in a short amount of time, but even then there's much more to programming in C then just knowing the language constructs.

It takes patience and dedication to become good at well... anything really. And so blatantly ignoring this fact of life makes you *sound* ignorant. I don't know if you really are, but there you have your explanation for the mockery received.

Just poking around a bit in one language and jumping another bright and sparkling one, kind of makes one a jack of all trades and a master of none. nothing wrong with that, but getting bored or lacking patience is a sure way to guarantee not becoming good at something specific.
---

I wanted to do a little comparison *cough*rant*cough* between computer languages and natural languages. Natural languages have grammar and a vocabulary. Programming languages have syntax and keywords. The vocabulary for say German has something like 40 000 words, much bigger than the 32 keywords in C89. The grammar is also more complex. With some effort it takes around 3-4 years to become adequately proficient. But even then you might not be proficient enough to catch all the words and you might not get jokes etc. and more advanced language constructs. Now take C again. You can manage to learn it in about a semester (or two) at an equal level of proficiency, unlike German you'd know the entire vocabulary and grammar.

But then you'd pretty much be perfectly proficient wouldn't you? Not really. One interesting thing about languages with limited vocabulary is that you need other ways to properly express things. And so the way you combine words become more complex. Indeed to actually do anything in C involves calling a function. And how you go about it In C this would be the methodology. And this is why even knowing the entire C language doesn't mean mastering it. You could spend a full year studying nothing but maths and programming methodology and you'd still not have learned everything, far from it. To top it off there's a bunch of library APIs, OS environments and CPU architectures you'd want to know about too.

Ever noticed how people who presumably know C ask why printf() won't work on PSP? Or why their graphics have nasty random spots and they don't know why because the code "should have worked, dang it". Clearly there's more to programming than knowing C.

But the good thing is that maths and methods is something you can use regardless of computer language and so you can use this knowledge in any of them. Also if the syntax is similar between two languages you can cut down the time it takes to learn a new language. So learning programming for the first time takes more time than learning more of them. For instance knowing either Java or C++ will radically cut down the time needed to learn the other.

Too bad the same isn't true for natural languages. Some grammar knowledge can be useful learning a second language, but mostly you'll have to learn everything from scratch each time, since there's so few similarities. Notice how I said big vocabulary means there's less complexity to the actual language? Well the grammar might be relatively simple but knowing english grammar won't do you much good learning spanish grammar. even if the syntax was simple and similar, there'd be a whole bunch of new keywords to learn. Anyways thanks to relatively simple grammar, means you're more proficient at a natural language after having spent time learning the vocabulary.

*looks over* WTH am I saying here anyway? :)
"If you have specific questions ... don't hesitate to ask as the more generic the question is the more philosophic the answer will be" - PSPWizard
Yosh
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by Yosh »

as I said sure it takes way more time to truly masterize a language, but there's no need to masterize it just to use a few libraries
It's up to us if we wanna master it truly or not, who the heck cares about that, I find it funny to learn how different languages work that's why I just seek to masterize their syntax firstly, one can do whatever the heck's wished on his free time, it's mean to try discouraging him

I think knowing a language doesn't mean anything actually, because a language is a means of expression, but using it properly's another story
A compiler does know its corresponding language too, but isn't actually able to get if it's properly used or not for instance

anyway I do speak fluently even if not perfectly german, while I'm just a frenchman so know how learning foreign languages is, and do not understand how people can ask questions such as "why won't printf work on my psp"

I do understand such a reaction like moskito's, but it's just caused by a wrong interpretation
the purpose of language is to be able to understand what one's got in mind, not to divert it from its meaning
that's why languages cannot be literally translated, and need an adaptation to express what its author truly meant when formulating it
the mere existence of ambiguity's meant to haunt us forever anyway so there's no need to play its game
RoXante
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by RoXante »

I'll try this out.
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noname120
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Re: Read This First: Learning How to Program

Post by noname120 »

m0skit0 wrote:
Yosh wrote:I started learning C on my own during January this year, whenever I had time and when I had free time before class, and finished maybe 2-3 weeks later (but still needed to pratice then)
Without having practicing a programming language ever before? You must be some kind of genius then.
Yosh wrote:anyway I finished porting it in the beginning of March
So if I understood correctlty, you didn't know a thing about programming but you started learning programming on January, made a game using SDL on PC, ported it to PSP, lost time with PSP's SDL bugs, and finished in the beginning of March? Wow, you must be some kind of genius then.
Yosh wrote:I Iearned most of C++ in one single evening, aka maybe 12h in a row I don't know exactly
So you didn't even know OOP and learned most of C++ in one single evening? Wow, you must be some kind of genius then.
Yosh wrote:This time I'm finishing learning basis in x86 asm
Already got there? Nice then, although I'm kind of disappointed you didn't reverse engineer Windows on a couple of hours.
Yosh wrote: a teacher told me C / C++ are kinda out-dated languages
Give him a slap and send him here. Just FYI, most games are written in C++, and almost all (if not all) operating systems are written 90% in C. C/C++ is most likely fastest language out there. So no, they're not out-dated. They're just old.

Big lol !
I learned x86, but it didn't took an evening for me !
C++ can't take an evening... Oh, yes, it took you an evening to print a hello world !

And even if you read the stuff on the siteduzero.com which is explain the very basis, it's almost impossible to read it fully in 1 evening.

Don't be foolish, printing a hello world in both asm and c++ don't means master a language.
Or you just copied code from another programs, that's doable.
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