Any point? (Programming)

[Infuriated]

So yeah, for a number of years I've been a half assed human being. I've attempted to learn programming numerous times over the course of my life and every attempt has turned into a hurling ball of fire colliding with the ocean and quickly dissipating into vapor. I get obsessed, and then hyped, look for a guide, find one and proceed to read a couple chapters/parts/sections/whatever and lose interest nearly instantly because there's seemingly no gratification until much, much later on and I just do not have the attention span.

On top of this, I only know basic math and that's always stuck in the back of my head, whispering, "you're a fucking idiot, just go do pixel art" and so I always do.

My first solution was narrowing down on more simplistic languages and eventually I found Python, and that had to be the furthest I've made it into programming, which I managed to learn almost enough to make a trash dos-window choose-your-own-path adventure 'game'.

I've heard a lot of experienced people say you should look at existing code, but I'm not really even sure where to start with this as I have no idea what's going on to begin with.

What's the best way to familiarize myself with a language to learn enough that I can tinker on my own? I did like Python but that may have only been because the tutorial was more tolerable than most of the other borefests I'd come across.

Note: Really, at this point, my huge grandiose dream is being able to make something along the lines of an ASCII/Roguelike game.

Help me penetrate the ocean, Eclipse!

[crzyone9584]

Personally I rip apart programs and learn from there. Ill broke them on purpose wait a few days so i totally have no clue what i deleted or changed and go from there. Its all trial and error. Start off small with something you feel comportable with. No one will be able to help you other than yourself. You just have to find the right outlet for learning code your own way.

[Marsh]

If you get bored quickly, something like Eclipse is probably good for you. As with little to no programming knowledge you can get instant results.

I am the same way, i quickly become bored of a project. This is apparently very common in programmers. There are beginners and finishers and apparently it is very hard to find people that will finish up a project or see it through until the end.

Once you start seeing actual results it becomes addictive though. It also helps once you start learning enough knowledge to actually make what you want to.

[Infuriated]

@crzyone9584:

> You just have to find the right outlet for learning code your own way.

I never really thought about it that way, I recently seen an open source Roguelike made with Python, maybe I'll try looking at its innerds and see if I can't make anything click. Thank's for the advice, man.

@Marsh

Yeah, I've actually been around for a very long time and I've started countless private projects that never seen the light of day, maybe I should start putting myself out there and join a project, I just never did because I'm flaky at best when It comes to sticking to any one thing and it kills me to leave anyone hanging.

I think I need ritalin or something, lol.

[PD]

Aha, same problem here. Started a million projects, only finished a couple. Still working on one and have been ever since I got into game development, 4 years ago :P The last 2 years have been hellish in terms of my programming, no motivation or desire to do anything. There were moments when I got my motivation back but that didn't last long. I'm still suprised that I'm still at it, working on Pokemon Chaos Realm :P But I don't regret the last 4 years as they have helped me learn a lot, so I say, take the plunge and hopefully you'll swim back up for air :P

[Octohunter]

You want instant gratification?  Try Game Maker.

It may seem childish, but it's a great way to get hooked on programming; I started with it in early 4th grade, and from there I gained the patience to rip apart Eclipse and get a feel of basically how everything works.  Then I got into Xcode/Objective-C and started programming iPhone apps.

Even today, I still use it sometimes when I need to test a theory, considering I know it much better than I know any other programming language.

[Godlord]

I recommend grabbing a [C book](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C_Programming) to learn from. It shouldn't take you long to learn (mostly a few days to grasp the basics), and you might not be able to grasp pointers from the first glance, but you'll eventually comprehend their inner working, and their use.

In addition to that, I discourage writing the applications that are normally written when reading such a book. Instead, I directly advise you to get your hands dirty with a library like [SDL](http://www.libsdl.org) to get used to programming in a language like C, almost immediately. There are plenty of [tutorials](http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/index.php) along side the [documentation](http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi/) to aid you.

Later on you can get into more advanced topics, use different libraries, etc. The reason why I recommend C is because it is a widely-used general-purpose programmming language, that does lack object-oriented programming (you might want to learn about that later on, but it is not required, and you can easily programme without it). The reason why I recommend SDL, is because it is maintained by at least two noticeable programmers, namely Sam Latinga, and Ryan C. Gordon, who do have a lot of experience in the area of cross-platform game development. In addition to that, the library itself is pretty solid and mature, and prevents you from being exposed to platform-specific details whilst programming.

Yours faithfully
  S.J.R. van Schaik.

[Infuriated]

Thanks for all the great info guys, I'll keep all the posts here in my mind and find the path that will click with me the best and, this should prove pretty useful for any lurkers with similar issues. :)