where to start in programming

[Bobby79]

i want to learn programming but i have no experience so i am at the beginning and i would like to get some help on what is the best language to learn as a beginner and is there any tutorials any one can suggest.

Tnx in advance for any help.

[Chamassa]

Before i can give you any reasonably usefull answer, the question would be what would you want to do with it.

Also, do you know stuff like HTML? maybe even CSS?

[Nghtmr9999]

Gogo iPhone response (I'll proofread later)

Cham pretty much nailed it. What type of programming are you looking to get in to? Web or applications?

Home edit: Once you give specifics, i'll be able to go into some detail about what you should do. Here's some general stuff.

First, you should read up on subversion (which I will further refer to as SVN), read more at Apache Subversion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This will allow you to store changes to your code without having to create a "backup1" "backup2" folder system. SVN's main difference is that it saves changes, instead of the whole project.

You can make a local repository on your hard drive if you choose, instead of storing it on a server. The greatest part of SVN is for those "oh sh..." moments where you totally break something in your code. SVN allows you to rollback versions, back to where the code works again.


If you have any further questions about SVN, or decide to use it for yourself, either post a message reply here or PM me on the forums.

I hope I, and the other programmers on the forum will be able to help you get into programming.

[Bobby79]

Definatly applications would be good.
As i say i have no previous experience so where to go from there is hopefully where you guys come in

[Chamassa]

Originally Posted by Bobby79

Definatly applications would be good.
As i say i have no previous experience so where to go from there is hopefully where you guys come in

Well you got about 2-3 reasonable options then, java, C++ or c#, but i think java or c# are easiest to get into. The strong point of C options is the software you use has very good user interface support, where as with java, this is a lot more rare.

I'm personally a PHP/Java developer who got into C++ out of interest. And i would advice java for complicated software (id have to look up development software with a GUI editor) and C# for more UI based software or software that interacts with windows/Linux oor programs.

Ill add more info later, on my phone now, but you can Wikipedia/Google few terms

[Chamassa]

Allright, incoming LOOOOOOOONG post.

Theres 2 things you will need to start programming:
1. a GOOD IDE.
IDE stands for Integrated development environment, its basicly a compiler, a text editor and alot more in one.
For Java you want to use Eclipse or Netbeans.
I'm personally a big fan of eclipse, since the quality of the error reports seems a lot better and the interface feels more natural, but about every java programmer has an opinion on those.
For Netbeans i honestly dont know where to look for a GUI (Graphical User Interface) Plugin, but for Eclipse you can find the options more or less in this stackoverflow post.
For C++ (C-plus-plus) or C# (C-sharp), your best shot is Visual Studio from microsoft, although there are some open source IDE's that are good aswell.
Visual Studio has the GUI stuff build in really well.

2. GOOD information sources
This can more or less be divided into 2 parts, namely tutorials and API's (Application programming interface)
For tutorials, it all really depends how fast you learn, but i'll list a few i like:
Java

1. The Java™ Tutorials
2. Java Programming FAQs and Tutorials: Learning Java
3. Java Tutorial -- 1: Introduction to Programming in Java

C++

1. C++ Language Tutorial - C++ Documentation
2. Tutorials From FunctionX
3. CodeProject - Your Development Resource

C#

1. C# Station: C# Tutorial - Introduction

For C# i honestly hardly know any :P

For api's your best shot are the official ones:
Java: Java 2 Platform SE 5.0
C++: MSDN Library (Be awar there doesn't seem to be one COMPLETE api for C++, or i haven't found it yet)
C#: Class Library (same as C++)

Api's can be an absolute pain to learn to use, but are your most valuable resource.


So what about picking what language to do?
It all depends on what you wan to make, how much time you want to spend learning and how much feel you got for it.
Java is probably the easiest to start making software with, closely followed by C# and then C++ a good few steps behind it.
In terms of how much you can do with it once you get want to interact with other software or your OS, the order is saddly exactly reversed.
I would say read through some wikipedia stuff, some tutorials and make a decision, and feel free to add/correct me on anything or ask questions about all this stuff i posted :P

Cham/Kevin

[Bobby79]

Nice long post Cham. I'm at work at the moment so I will have a look when I can and decide after reading a few lnks

[Nghtmr9999]

Well said Cham, just to add to the post a little.

Eclipse is a solid editor not just for Java, but for some other languages too. It has advanced testing tools, but that's beyond the scope of what you're doing. Worth picking up even if you don't start with java.

For anything else, Microsoft offers Express (free) versions of their Visual Studio Software. They come in wonderful flavors such as Chocolate mousse C#, Strawberry upside down cake ala mode c++ and vanilla vanilla Visual Basic. If you are a student with a .edu email address, you can get full free versions of some of their software. This includes the almighty Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, which mixes everything into a tasty vanilla vanilla chocolate strawberry mousse upside down cake ala mode milkshake

(yum)


And, if you are feeling super brave, give emacs a try



Edit: If it helps any, my current assortment of tools I use for programming:

Eclipse, Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, emacs, filezilla, putty, unix bins for windows, my excel Scrum spreadsheet, tortoise SVN, SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio, if required)

[xartin]

Originally Posted by Chamassa

For api's your best shot are the official ones:
Java: Java 2 Platform SE 5.0
C++: MSDN Library (Be awar there doesn't seem to be one COMPLETE api for C++, or i haven't found it yet)
C#: Class Library (same as C++)

Api's can be an absolute pain to learn to use, but are your most valuable resource.

With regards to the c++ api you might find the gcc gnu compiler documentation is extremely valuable as well as platform agnostic. since the c programming language has been around 20 or so years more than microsoft learning from a platform agnostic approach can be a definite advantage to your skillset.

The GNU C++ Library API Reference

[Tim]

I'd actually stay far away from gnu c++ compiler and really anything *nix related simply due to feasibility of what is actually used. When it comes to career paths, you want a skill set experience specific to a marketable sect of business. I personally have a vast, vast unix background, but I also have large backgrounds in other areas.

Right now the most marketable areas of development are:

Web based
Desktop based
Phone based

So keep that in mind with whatever you choose to learn.