Computer Programming

[Groovebox]

So... I want to get into computer programming to increase my value in the workforce. I studied industrial design in college, and currently work for an engineering firm as a computer software interface designer. I do not do any of the programming right now, and most of the design I do is in Flash/Photoshop/Illustrator... graphics/typography, etc... Anyways, a co-wroker suggested starting out with Python and then moving on to C. I know a lot of people here are into programming, and was wondering if someone can steer me in the right direction... I know A LOT about computers and can handle math quite well. Any suggestions?

[Ikith]

Visual basic is a great place to START imo...

me.close

[aurik]

Go back to college and get a degree, otherwise you'll never learn the concepts that make good developers stand out from people who picked it up as a hobby.

[thestalkmore]

<3 VB

[Senoska]

Visual basic, by far.

If that's too hard for you pick up VB.net and jump over to normal VB. That's how I did it at least > > lol.

(LOLDOTNET)

[Groovebox]

I'll look into VB, thanks!

Go back to college and get a degree, otherwise you'll never learn the concepts that make good developers stand out from people who picked it up as a hobby.

I'll always be a designer, but having intermediate knowledge of programming will greatly improve my chances in finding a job with the companies I happen to find interesting. College was fun but I don't want to get another bachelor's degree lol... if I ever go back to school I'd just go for a master's degree.

[Devek]

Become a lawyer or something.

Programming may be worthless by the time you get a degree.

Lol@vb, good job learning a language that doesn't teach you anything about a computer.

[Maguspk]

People get jobs programming stuff without having a degree?

There are some pretty big theoretical concepts you learn even as a freshman during a CS major and they aren't really things you can easily learn on your own unless you're extremely gifted or have had experience with it before. Even if you do get a job without a formal degree, you'll most likely be doing more work than necessary and writing extremely inefficient code (like people who use quicksort type algorithms no matter what the case, or people who don't understand when to use random/ordered access XD ) I'm just a freshman but I have been working on code all summer with the software development team at my school for a grant from the Air Force, and there are seniors who write poor code, like these fuselets I've been working on. So yea... if you wanna be good, go get a formal education like the others said.

[Devek]

Tons of programmers out there don't have degrees.. but that becomes a who you know not who you are type of thing and thats life. College is the best way to get to know people that matter though.

Anyway.. I've met tons of programmers who had years of training and were supposedly qualified but didn't understand things like SIMD processing (heaven forbid you'd ever want to process lots of data quickly..) and I have also met 12 year olds that spank the living shit out of me so idk.

I think programming is a talent you either have or you don't, and PART of that talent involves being able to teach yourself new concepts quickly because there is so much to know you would never learn it in a classroom environment dumbed down for the lowest in the class so colleges can put some nice figures out. A few colleges like Berkley don't give a shit and you won't pass their program without being leet but thats the exception not the rule.

The only thing I really learned in college is how to work with other people in a professional manner and I met lots of great contacts which helped me out later in life and for those two things alone I would say college is wonderful for anybody, I just wouldn't say that it makes a difference in the long run between someone who has talent and someone who doesn't. The person with talent will learn just about any concept in a day with nothing but Google as their aid

My main concern is the quality of immigrant and outsourced labor. It is a little too early for companies to seriously rely on such labor (hi2u Microsoft) but if the cost of living stays the same in America relative to other countries I think anyone with a job that doesn't require physically moving something or having a lot of money in the first place is kind of screwed in 10 years IMHO. Lawyers are protected from this because of BAR exams that require them to have attended specific classes and passed specific exams local to where they practice and pass specific background checks to weed out immigrants and other highly qualified people that would do their job just as well but for a reasonable fee.

Either way.. if you were really starting out I would pick up something like pascal and only focus on it for a week for just the BASIC concept then move straight to C. If you can't learn C in a few weeks you have no business programming a computer.

[Rotsu]

C and C++. You can talk about how awesome this and that programming language is, in the end when you work in the industry you will use either C or C++. Having said that, there are still very useful languages that are used. It really depends on what environment you want to work on. Down here in the LA area, VHDL and verilog are commonly used on embedded systems, while assembly is still used on micro processor designs. So what exactly are you looking for ?

[Miji]

Lol@vb, good job learning a language that doesn't teach you anything about a computer.

Isn't the purpose of high level programming languages to abstract away most of what you don't care about in a computer? He's only looking for an intermediate skill set, so damn near any language should be fine that he finds comfortable.

As for the OP, I'd suggest starting in C and then moving to something object oriented once you know why you'd want to. I work with a large group of engineers turned programmers, and 90% of them missed the point of OOP completely and it shows in their work.

[Devek]

Isn't the purpose of high level programming languages to abstract away most of what you don't care about in a computer? He's only looking for an intermediate skill set, so damn near any language should be fine that he finds comfortable.

No, because you CARE about everything in the computer. The reason you use high level languages is to save development time. For example my MUD server is faster than anything else out there and it is written in Java. It could be even faster in C but to implement that same design in C would take forever, but it wouldn't be much faster because of how familiar I am with how Java is implemented in C.

High level languages are a good thing, but only if you know how they work. Check out debian portage for an example of how not to use a high level language, lol.

[Miji]

No, because you CARE about everything in the computer. The reason you use high level languages is to save development time. For example my MUD server is faster than anything else out there and it is written in Java. It could be even faster in C but to implement that same design in C would take forever, but it wouldn't be much faster because of how familiar I am with how Java is implemented in C.

High level languages are a good thing, but only if you know how they work. Check out debian portage for an example of how not to use a high level language, lol.

No, we care about everything in the computer. Someone seeking an intermediate skill set probably doesn't care, and he can suffice on being an intermediate programmer either way.

[Norelco]

Go back to college and get a degree, otherwise you'll never learn the concepts that make good developers stand out from people who picked it up as a hobby.

That's not necessarily true. There are plenty of good programmers who don't have a degree to back up their trade. Most colleges have it all wrong these days, and stress 90% theory and 10% practicality. While I won't deny that some of the theory is important, it's not completely necessary. There are plenty of books that teach these concepts you speak of.

p.s. I went to college for my Computer Science degree, I didn't mean to come off as a self-taught programmer.

[MisterBob]

Learn C or C++. Do NOT learn VB. Also shy away from things like PHP. These languages tend to teach bad practices, and you'll end up with terrible habits you won't be able to kick.

[aurik]

Go back to college and get a degree, otherwise you'll never learn the concepts that make good developers stand out from people who picked it up as a hobby.

That's not necessarily true. There are plenty of good programmers who don't have a degree to back up their trade. Most colleges have it all wrong these days, and stress 90% theory and 10% practicality. While I won't deny that some of the theory is important, it's not completely necessary. There are plenty of books that teach these concepts you speak of.

p.s. I went to college for my Computer Science degree, I didn't mean to come off as a self-taught programmer.

I disagree; if you learn a language, prepare to be obsolete in 5 years. If you learn the theory (and therefore can pick up languages easily), you will be useful forever.

The languages and tools change so fast that you're better off learning the math behind things--the math never changes--rather than a specific language implementation that will be passe in a couple years.

[Charla]

How long has C been around? I'm pretty sure it's longer than 5 years. You can't really compare learning C to learning another language, because there's just so much actual programming that uses C it's much less likely to be useless at any given time than, say, python.

For the OP's purposes, I think any of the approaches suggested here would work. My college's CS program focused on "practicality" a lot more than theory, but maybe I just picked a good one. As a designer, the important part is for him to understand how the code can be used best, which won't change all that much from one language to the next, and to understand the underlying architecture, which isn't really a "programming" topic in the first place.

[Norelco]

I disagree; if you learn a language, prepare to be obsolete in 5 years. If you learn the theory (and therefore can pick up languages easily), you will be useful forever.

The languages and tools change so fast that you're better off learning the math behind things--the math never changes--rather than a specific language implementation that will be passe in a couple years.

Oh, if you put it that way, that I definitely agree with. I would hope though if you're coding extensively, no matter the language, you're at least picking up some of the theory and practices along the way, but I definitely know where you are coming from.

At my previous employer we were making the shift to .NET and a survey was passed around asking what most developers would prefer: C# or VB.NET, and all of the VB script kiddies basically freaked out because they were so used to VB so they wanted to use VB.NET thinking that it would be exactly like VB, while all of the people (like me) with a formal education really didn't give a shit because we were confident enough the new syntax wouldn't be such a hurdle.

It was funny though because it sort of exposed all of the coding frauds at our company.

So yeah, you're absolutely right.

[finale23]

C is the way to go. it's a good language to learn some rudimentary programming logic, or at least, i picked it up pretty fast.

[aurik]

How long has C been around? I'm pretty sure it's longer than 5 years. You can't really compare learning C to learning another language, because there's just so much actual programming that uses C it's much less likely to be useless at any given time than, say, python.

C's been "popular" since the 80s (well technically the 70s but not in wide usage until 80s), but the C that your pappy wrote in the 80s is a very far cry from the C(++/#) that you see written today.

Edit: also as an artist-gone-programmer, you should probably learn maya/3dsmax scripting first before anything else. They'll never hire an artist based on his ability to write wicked linked lists, but if you can write maya scripts for other artists to work faster, you're golden.