Programming Forums - new approach to learning programming...should i give it a go?

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- - new approach to learning programming...should i give it a go? (http://www.programmingforums.org/showthread.php?t=10432)

angry_asian

Jun 19th, 2006 7:07 PM

new approach to learning programming...should i give it a go?

i found this new book that takes a 'different' approach to programming....award winning, best teacher of the year Aminash Kak teaches C++ and Java simultaneously, saying u learn more and its more efficient, also given code in one language make a prog. that does same thing in the other helps you be mroe independent than other books with copyin code...its at my local library and i checked it out. it is ok but assumes u know c....uhh i dont know c so its pretty rough start, dunno if i should just go back to java and then python/c++

ALSO i want to know about game programming, i went to gamedev and got game maker made a good game with levels saving and profiles (graphics were not good but everything else was) are there any projects where i can join in as the guy who just does the easy redundant work no one else wants to do? and it needs to be easy but yeah im lookin for some real experience

DaWei

Jun 19th, 2006 7:19 PM

They'll probably wonder if you're going to get angry, walk away, and leave 'em in the lurch ;) .

frankish

Jun 19th, 2006 7:25 PM

You can join game projects at SourceForge. C, C++, PHP are all good languages but the real trick to being a good programmer is not knowing a specific languages but knowing how to work with what you have. To be a decent programmer I would probably start with JavaScript if I were you. There is no need to have a compiler and the language is fairly simple and you can have fun with it.

angry_asian

Jun 19th, 2006 7:41 PM

thats interesting no one has told me that before, almost every1 said c++ first everything else will b ez...
i chose to learn JAVA first cause it needs notepad commandprompt and jdk and is pretty simple....i know HTML and a little JavaScript but they arent really programming theyre scripting...i could learn more JavaScript though

DaWei

Jun 19th, 2006 8:22 PM

Javascript, though it is a scripting language, is definitely programming. HTML is not. You may be confusing the term, "programming", with "compiled to native code", I don't know.

Arevos

Jun 20th, 2006 4:12 AM

I've always felt that programming is a subject independant of the language that implements it. Perhaps teaching C++ and Java in tandem helps the student see this better. Personally, I wouldn't recomment C++ as a first language; I feel it's relatively high complexity distracts the student from the more important principles they should be learning.

Javascript is an interesting suggestion, but I've always found that it's rather difficult to debug, myself. I haven't found a Javascript debugger that's as good as the ones I find in popular IDEs, such as Eclipse, and I haven't seen an interactive interpretor for Javascript that's as good as the one in Python.

I'd go with Python myself, but that's my answer for everything ;)

Indigno

Jun 20th, 2006 10:51 PM

Javascript confuses the Hell outta me. More often than not, I have to copy and paste a couple of different tutorials, edit the variables, change some of the functions, and then kind of keep changing stuff until something works, without really understanding it. I wouldn't suggest using it as a starter language. I would stick to the more "mainstream" C, C++. or even C# over Javascript (though that's my own personal opinion)

DaWei

Jun 21st, 2006 8:33 AM

Please don't take my post #5 as recommending Javascript as a learning language. I was merely correcting the statement that "it isn't really a programming language." I don't find it confusing, but I'm not a big fan of weakly typed languages. I like to know that 1 + 1 is 2 (not 11) without having to break out the parseInt function every other line. That's just personal outlook (and probably old-fogeydom), of course.

ShadowAssasin

Jun 21st, 2006 9:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arevos

Personally, I wouldn't recomment C++ as a first language; I feel it's relatively high complexity distracts the student from the more important principles they should be learning.

Like what? I think the details that c++ exposes you to are great for someone to learn. You also get more opporunities to be creative.

Arevos

Jun 21st, 2006 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShadowAssasin

Like what? I think the details that c++ exposes you to are great for someone to learn. You also get more opporunities to be creative.

Perhaps an example could best explain what I mean. Below are two simple programs that do exactly the same thing. One is in C++, the other is in Python.

C++:

#include <iostream>

#include <vector>

using namespace std;



int main() {

    vector<string> names;



    names.push_back("Bob")

    names.push_back("Fred")



    for (vector<string>::iterator iter = names.begin(); 

         iter != names.end();

         iter++)

    {

        cout << *iter << endl;

    }

    return 0;

}

Python:

names = ["Bob", "Fred"]

for name in names:

    print name

This is what I meant by C++'s complexity distracting the student from the essentials of programming.

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