Learning to code?

[idklol]

So this isn't exactly a "help me out i have a problem" thread but more of a "can anyone point me in the right direction" thread. I'm currently looking into changing careers and i'm looking to go into computers, although i'm not certain what aspect. Computer games have always been of great interest to me so i've been doing some research and came up with game design, coding etc.

From what i've read the actual design side of it isn't really the way for me to go. The coding side intrigues me but if i'm being honest i haven't much of an idea of how it actually works. Now i found a website with a beginner course on java script.

http://www.codecademy.com/

I got through the course and enjoyed it. What i'm looking for and asking is does anyone know of any good websites/programs/whatever for this sort thing. I wanna get more in depth with this before i plow straight into it. If anyone can help would be greatly apreciated!

[Cayos]

Google has a couple programming courses, but I've never used them. http://code.google.com/edu/languages/

[The Stig]

Since you actually want to get into programming, I suggest, once you're comfortable with the basics of coding (I forget the term but I think it's thinking object-orientated... and other things) is to actually learn something towards the area you're interest in, which is, as you said, games.

So I suggest DarkBASIC:

http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2030

Get the "uber" pack which contains a huge bunch of extras for £7 more (totalling £31) and then download/read the manuals/tutorials and see what you can cook up with the engine and materials given to you. Don't worry about creating your own textures/models yet but just toy with it.

Back a few years ago they used to sell a "printed manual" pack for something around £5 but I think they don't do that anymore
If you're REALLY interested I suggest printing out the materials for times you need to be away from the PC but want to keep learning, i.e.:

at work
on the throne (toilet)
bedtime reading
idle (maybe you're waiting for a train, etc)

EDIT: My bad, the good/extra stuff is in the PRO version! But costs significantly more but seems to be much more powerful!

If you're unsure, I guess download some of the sample games that are hanging around. And if you're very serious, go all the way.

And it's all about willpower/effort, since you've not really got a teacher guiding you.

----

If 3D seems too much for you, try:

RPG Maker VX (£40 i think? But if you know where to look ......)

It's all 2D.

And learn the Ruby language within it, once mastered you can basically absolutely modify anything you want within the engine.

---

Don't know how old you are but if you're going to University, I believe Southampton University is the "renowned" location for studying Games Design, but back in 2004 when I looked at it, I believe you had to be good at Art and Chess as a requirement, on top of other things.

[Renzokuken]

As far as learning coding through game programing goes, the free Unity engine is a great place to start. http://unity3d.com/

You can use C# or JavaScript for all the scripting, and you can get a good feel for all the other things that go along with game development, such as 3D modeling, textures, lighting, level design, ect. They also have some great tutorials on their website that help ease you into it. The free version will allow you to produce a game that can be posted online. If you happen to develop something extraordinary, for a minimal investment you can bring that game to android phones or iOS. Unity even supports XBL Arcade, PSN, and Wii virtual console, though that is a much more sizable investment.

I've been utilizing free lectures that some major universities have posted such as:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrica...puter-science/
http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

Also some great books to check out:
Breaking Into the Game Industry: Advice for a Successful Career from Those Who Have Done It This is a must read if you specifically want to get into game development.
Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity: All-in-one, multi-platform game development
Beginning C++ Through Game Programming

[aurik]

As a programmer in the games industry for 8 years now, I disagree with the suggestions here.

Your goal here shouldn't be to learn how to use a particular 3d engine, but rather to learn the foundational skills necessary to be a programmer, and then take some formal education so that you have a solid basis in the field. TBH, it's pretty hard to break into the industry as a programmer without a serious amount of education. Almost all the programmers I work with have 4-year college degrees in a computer science program. A few have minor degrees who got in through the QA -> internal promotion route.

Honestly I just suggest to download the free edition of MSVC and just start programming. Learning by doing small "stupid" things like text number-guessing games etc, then move on to something simple like solitaire, minesweeper, etc. If you can stick to it and stay interested for a while, you'll naturally pick up the required foundational skills, and then you can move on to formal education. At the very minimum, language basics, basic data structures, flow control, how to use the IDE (coding, compiling, and debugging effectively, understanding error messages), and later you can learn in concert with formal education topics like: algorithms/algorithm design, object orientation, memory management, concurrency, networking, etc.

FYI, I started programming back in the late 80s / early 90s but I didn't really get into it until id released the source code to Doom ('97), and monkeying around with that was the major event that led me into my current career.

[Eliseos]

As a programmer in the games industry for 8 years now, I disagree with the suggestions here.

Your goal here shouldn't be to learn how to use a particular 3d engine, but rather to learn the foundational skills necessary to be a programmer, and then take some formal education so that you have a solid basis in the field. TBH, it's pretty hard to break into the industry as a programmer without a serious amount of education. Almost all the programmers I work with have 4-year college degrees in a computer science program. A few have minor degrees who got in through the QA -> internal promotion route.

Honestly I just suggest to download the free edition of MSVC and just start programming. Learning by doing small "stupid" things like text number-guessing games etc, then move on to something simple like solitaire, minesweeper, etc. If you can stick to it and stay interested for a while, you'll naturally pick up the required foundational skills, and then you can move on to formal education. At the very minimum, language basics, basic data structures, flow control, how to use the IDE (coding, compiling, and debugging effectively, understanding error messages), and later you can learn in concert with formal education topics like: algorithms/algorithm design, object orientation, memory management, concurrency, networking, etc.

FYI, I started programming back in the late 80s / early 90s but I didn't really get into it until id released the source code to Doom ('97), and monkeying around with that was the major event that led me into my current career.

Pretty much this. If you don't have a degree (most companies require it before they even look longer than 3 seconds at your resume), you're not finding any job that is worth anything. Even with a degree in this economy, you're going to need experience to have a real shot at finding a job.

[The Stig]

As a programmer in the games industry for 8 years now, I disagree with the suggestions here.

Ya I'm not truely a programmer, more like a hobby than a full time job, so don't listen to me, but it was just my thinking on how I would go about it if I had to kickstart something. Might as well be something I have an interest in, that's all.

But that reminds me, if you can be clever enough and make the next "Angry Birds" type of game and sell, who knows. That game is simplicity/physics at its best!

When I did my post earlier all I thought was "aim big" but I completely forgot about indie games and how successful some are, and how the "casual" market is bigger than ever.

[Renzokuken]

As a programmer in the games industry for 8 years now, I disagree with the suggestions here.

Definitely listen to this guy, especially if you're certain that you want to start out as a programer. A 4 year degree will give you a great deal of flexibility as well as provide a nice structure to learn a skill set that's pretty tough to tackle on your own.

If this is the path you decide to take, keep in mind two things:
1) You can probably make better money and work less hours programming for things like business enterprise software.
2) Game studios will probably want to see some completed games that you've worked on. With so many tools out there to create games there's really no excuse for not having tried a few games of your own if that's what you want to do for a living.

[Fairy-Killer]

I can agree with the suggestions here. I am a computer engineer currently looking for an internship so I have been looking at jobs. 90% of the jobs require that you have at bare minimum a 3.0 GPA during your time here. You will have to learn a lot of languages that aren't even taught in your curriculum and do a lot of side projects; and game studios are one of the most demanding in this aspect. They want you to have some sort of coding experience with their game or some other engine. It's quite ridiculous how much extracurricular activity you will have to do to not be frowned upon when looking for a job. School will teach you how to understand coding and concepts of it, but most of your coding? All on your own. This to me is particularly frustrating and something that should be thought about before entering a career like this. For example, at A&M, we are taught only in C and C++ for the first two years and it is assumed that we know Java. These are the two languages we spend most of our time with... However, a lot of companies require experience with Java, Perl, C/C++, Verilog (HDL), html, and other languages. And not only do you have to have experience, you must also be able to reproduce these things in interviews. They're usually things that are not that hard but you, more than likely, will not have had experience with unless you did it outside of class. My suggestion? Get into a good comp sci program, learn a lot of languages on your own, and keep your GPA up.

[Ddz]

I am a technical recruiter, and I want to get into developing mobile (iPhone) apps. I am trying to take the best approach as well, and not niche myself out too much. I have a few iOS dev friends who had me download xcode and register for some tutorial vids, which I can do in my spare time, but I'd really like to back it with a degree. I have a 2 year design degree (lol) already, and I kind of think that comp sci is a waste of time. Your thoughts?

From most of the jobs I recruit for/place, the bar is set very high and lots of people tech out on a phone call before they even get to a whiteboard/keyboard. Boy the industry sure does pay, though.

Btw I've had a job opening at Bungie for an iOS dev for a month now and can't find anyone good enough to get hired there. Such a rad opportunity. /sad

[Maguspk]

The resources to learn are all here on the internet. What is most likely going to stop you and every other person who randomly gets the desire to 'code lolol' is motivation and curiosity. You can't expect to get a degree and have it magically lead to a job, nor can you expect to learn X language/engine and expect that to lead to anything. You need to take some initiative and use google and the community to get your questions answered and pursue you goals.

You can sit through a ton of good MIT/Stanford/etc. lectures and even take the tests/quizzes/labs with them, all for free for viewing online.

Game companies, especially the ones that matter like Blizzard/Valve/etc. are looking for you to have made something, iterated on it and released it and improved it based on feedback. You also need to demonstrate a working knowledge of the various fields necessary to really thrive in the gaming industry (modeling, design, AI, etc). You don't need to be expert in them all obviously, that's ridiculous, but you can't be a one trick pony who only knows how to make a 3D model but can't do anything meaningful with it.

[Tatatoothy]

While I'm not a programmer myself, I had to take a course in Python for my MS. I found Python to be very basic and simple to learn, and illustrates very basic and common concepts in programming. You definitely want to make some very simple programs on the side as you're learning--even practicing writing something super-basic like a calculator or a parser is good enough for starting out.

That said, I agree with what others have said and that getting into a decent CS program will most likely be worthwhile, if only to get some basic understanding of concepts and theories in programming, and to start building a small repertoire of languages (among other things).

[Maguspk]

Also while codeacademy isn't bad, learning javascript isn't really going to help you unless you're doing web development. The fact that it's online and readily accessible without any installation on your PC is a nice bonus since you sound curious more than anything. Give this website a try, it's a bit more interactive and you'll be working with a ruby interpreter and ruby is a very big language right now, great to learn and get involved in although it's heavy in the web development area thanks to frameworks like rails, etc.

http://tryruby.org

[Senoska]

Ahoy. Professional programmer here as well. I'd suggest picking up c#. Easy to learn and easy to transition into Java, ASP, or even PHP if you want. Visual Studio is fantastic for this. If you want to eventually get into games, you can pick up XNA at the snap of a fingers that uses C# syntax for games on the xbox 360 and windows machines. Screw what everyone else is saying here. If you're going to be doing any kind of windows desktop development (and chances are very good you will be at some point in your professional or hobby life), c# is at least a competitive standard.

Learn basic things like classes, functions, etc. Be sure to learn about the different types of classes and functions as well. Abstract classes or Interfaces for example which will give you a lot more to play with when you're putting out logic for a program.

[aurik]

Honestly, Ruby, Python, C#, Java, C++, Lua, Basic...it doesn't really matter what language you start with, all of them have the same fundamentals that you need to pick up like flow control, data structures etc. Eventually you'll pick up the skills to just use whatever language is handy for the job you need to do.

Just don't be silly and learn something like Scheme / Ada. While nice languages, hardly anyone uses the functional programming paradigm in a professional environment.

RE: iOS/android development, but I wouldn't suggest higher education for something like that. For that, just pick up and learn the tools you need to get the job done.

[Senoska]

Honestly, Ruby, Python, C#, Java, C++, Lua, Basic...it doesn't really matter what language you start with, all of them have the same fundamentals that you need to pick up like flow control, data structures etc. Eventually you'll pick up the skills to just use whatever language is handy for the job you need to do.

Just don't be silly and learn something like Scheme / Ada. While nice languages, hardly anyone uses the functional programming paradigm in a professional environment.

RE: iOS/android development, but I wouldn't suggest higher education for something like that. For that, just pick up and learn the tools you need to get the job done.

I agree with everything here. Learn 1 OOP language and you learn them all. All the ideas switch back and forth between the languages. All you need to learn to switch to a new language is basic syntax and class names and you'll be fine. I'd just like to re-suggest c# from this list since it fits everything you want (Video games are XNA) or Java since it also has some great video game creation tools. Java also enables you to develop on Android and Blackberry phones.

If you learn Java, you know C#, and if you know c# you know Java. Classes and class use are almost identical, but C# has a much cleaner UI development scheme. (FUCK SWING, FUCK NETBEANS, FUCK JGRASP [WITH ALL OF MY HATE])

[Zhais]

Your first programming assignment (And I'm very serious about this):

Tell me how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

[aurik]

(Video games are XNA)

Most videogames are C/C++ not XNA. About the only games that are XNA are indie x360 games. C# is great and all, but for non-mobile platforms, game engine code these days is generally C++.

[Senoska]

Most videogames are C/C++ not XNA. About the only games that are XNA are indie x360 games. C# is great and all, but for non-mobile platforms, game engine code these days is generally C++.

You're right. I wasn't saying all games are XNA, but it makes a simple move from c# to gaming very easily. C++ is garbage if you ask me, though. I appreciate it for what it is, but I prefer quicker development over development freedom. C# has its issues, IE: No multiple inheritance, which is enough to drive someone insane, but it does what it is intended to do.

[aurik]

Garbage or not, you won't get a job in the industry without knowing C++.