Computer Programming

[Correction]

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.

And the book that best teaches the language is less than 300 pages long. And if you live near a university you can probably pick up a used copy for less than 20 bucks.

But please don't learn a language than assume you're a developer. It's called Computer Science for a reason, and if you haven't mastered the concepts behind the science of programming you're going to quickly see your own skills fade before a very, very competitive field of more agile thinkers and never get a proper programming job.

[Maguspk]

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.

And the book that best teaches the language is less than 300 pages long. And if you live near a university you can probably pick up a used copy for less than 20 bucks.

But please don't learn a language than assume you're a developer. It's called Computer Science for a reason, and if you haven't mastered the concepts behind the science of programming you're going to quickly see your own skills fade before a very, very competitive field of more agile thinkers and never get a proper programming job.

Like aurik said earlier too, you need the concepts not just a few languages under your belt. There is only so much you can learn from a book, but tons more when you're working with a professor who bases their lives off of the research they do. Or even a teacher who has seen the CS field for a good time.

I learned Java first because that's just what my school taught to us first, my friend learned C to start then moved to Java. Overall I didn't learn much Java so to speak, I learned concepts and how to use Java to do them, and how other languages might make certain things in Java much simpler. That's the difference between a book and a teacher. I got a book to learn python so I could use jython to write fuselets in, and the book claimed to teach you all these great concepts, among them OOP. When I finished the book and realized their discussion of OOP in python and examples it was hardly sufficient, especially since python is more a scripting and the code you used for most of the book wasn't organized lol. Idk.. my experience is definetely limited but I think seeing Correction and aurik's posts backs up my idea that you should really try and get a degree and not just try to learn languages; otherwise you're only short changing yourself

[Charla]

That's another thing. People don't seem to pay enough attention to the difference between a scripting language and a normal language. I read in an article once:

If you can't explain why "while (*p++ = *q++);" copies a string, you can't really call yourself a programmer (I may have misquoted the syntax somehow, please don't hurt me much).

edit: yeah, I realized I forgot to deref and forgot to come back and change it.

[octopus]

If you can't explain why "while (p++ = q++);" copies a string, you can't really call yourself a programmer (I may have misquoted the syntax somehow, please don't hurt me much).

close... should be:

while (*p++ = *q++);

[Devek]

But what is a string anyway?

[octopus]

that reminds me of my computer science class during high school.... (like 10 years ago). We were using Pascal. The teacher was explaining some stuff, and a guy asked him:

guy: and... what is real?
teacher: you know, when you wake up, everything is real?

note - real is like "double" in c. A decimal variable data type.

[Zhais]

But what is a string anyway?

character array pointer!

[evilbau]

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.

this is a really good answer. director/flash scripting (forget what language its called) might be helpful in your field also, and it covers some basic programming concepts. It also has good feedback in that you can see the results pretty quickly, and frustration with compiled code has stopped many wannabe programmers from learning more. Related to that is to learn how to use a debugger, it will make everything you do easier.

[Zhais]

this is a really good answer. director/flash scripting (forget what language its called) might be helpful in your field also, and it covers some basic programming concepts. It also has good feedback in that you can see the results pretty quickly, and frustration with compiled code has stopped many wannabe programmers from learning more. Related to that is to learn how to use a debugger, it will make everything you do easier.

Actionscript. It's turning out to be a really darn powerful tool with AS3 and everything that Adobe has been putting out. I personally am on an app dev team using it.

[evilbau]

this is a really good answer. director/flash scripting (forget what language its called) might be helpful in your field also, and it covers some basic programming concepts. It also has good feedback in that you can see the results pretty quickly, and frustration with compiled code has stopped many wannabe programmers from learning more. Related to that is to learn how to use a debugger, it will make everything you do easier.

Actionscript. It's turning out to be a really darn powerful tool with AS3 and everything that Adobe has been putting out. I personally am on an app dev team using it.

i remember using it a few years ago for a multimedia class. Most people weren't computer science majors, they took it for who knows why, but I was running circles around them with a little effort into the back-end. Seemed like a good place to start getting your feet wet.

[Norelco]

ActionScript is fun. Before I got my current job as a C++ developer I was an employee at a web firm using ActionScript to make flash games and apps. I must say it was pretty damn fun, and yes, every year it gets more and more powerful.

[Zhais]

One of my coworkers half-seriously half jokingly talks about how flash is gonna take over the world.

With AS3 some people are doing some awesome true 3D visualizations... and with Adobe Air coming out there's a lot more powerful stuff you can do with applications. While it sometimes sucks not being able to do pointer control, or operator overloads or the such, there's still plenty of things that makes it easy.

[Devek]

Ya lol. In 1998 we were talking about how proper flash will make a webpage that loads faster and looks identical on all browsers as opposed to the crap we were dealing with back then.

[MisterBob]

I don't know, AJAX is getting up there. Flash suffers far too much from long load times, and can be very frustrating.
With newer toolkits out, like GWT, programming AJAX apps is becoming much more bearable. They work pretty much anywhere, and benefit from incredibly short load times when used correctly.

[Devek]

Well, that was before flash became a bloated as hell.

Flash9 is full of problems due to the transaction period which introduced security issues ;P

SVG may someday take the nich flash used to take, opera supports it pretty well and firefox is getting better.

[Norelco]

The only thing that will bloat a flash movie or run slow respectively is: bitmapped media, sound files (although you can stream the audio), gradients, and inefficient ActionScript.

In my experience, flash runs best with vector art because it is clean, small, and lightweight. I cringe whenever I see people try to use jpegs in their flash apps. I'm also of the opinion that flash is most effective when used sparingly. Less is more. Use flash to enhance something on your website, don't use it to make the ENTIRE interface. It just gets chunky and will be slow.

That's just my opinion on flash tho. I've coded many websites in flash, mini-apps, and flash-based games for handhelds.

**edited to add sound data

[Charla]

How does vector even work anyway? The one time I tried to use it I ended up with transparant boxes all over the place and no way to get rid of them. I couldn't click on anything without trying to move 3 boxes out of the way first, and most of the time I'd end up making a new box instead. And this is supposed to be clean and lightweight?

[evilbau]

How does vector even work anyway? The one time I tried to use it I ended up with transparant boxes all over the place and no way to get rid of them. I couldn't click on anything without trying to move 3 boxes out of the way first, and most of the time I'd end up making a new box instead. And this is supposed to be clean and lightweight?

yeah it is because it only stores info about vectors, not each pixel like a bitmap. for example, a triangle will store the endpoints, and the various colors and how the lines are connected to the endpoints, thats about it.

'clean and lightweight' has nothing to do with you using whatever program to create the vector graphics. I like them too, they always seem to come out looking better and scale better (resizing and such). It doesn't suck just because you don't know how to use it.

[Fhqwghads]

I cannot stress this enough:

FUCK VISUAL BASIC

If you're going to go RAD then use C#. At least then you can optionally use pointers and not alienate yourself from C/C++ syntax. You still get the benefits of drag & drop GUI development with easily wired event handling without being stuck in a dead language.

[Norelco]

I cannot stress this enough:

FUCK VISUAL BASIC

If you're going to go RAD then use C#. At least then you can optionally use pointers and not alienate yourself from C/C++ syntax. You still get the benefits of drag & drop GUI development with easily wired event handling without being stuck in a dead language.

They're not going to learn much about programming if they're using VS.NET considering it does half of the work for you.