\"How did you get introduced to programing?\"
If you really wanted to know, it all started a verrrrry long time ago. There was this great RTS called C&C: Red Alert, and what the game even more fun was the ability to edit a file that would tweak basically anything in the game. I got tired of editing the file manually, and I figured it would be really cool if I could write my own program to provide an interface for editing. So my father picked me up an old copy of Visual Basic 4.0.
No previous programming experience.
No one to tell me what to do, just a couple books from the library.
No clue as to how these first steps were going to change my life.
\"How did you learn to program?\"
The aforementioned library books, and once I grasped the basics, more books that I bought for myself. I now have, sitting on my shelf, $100 (what I paid for them, anyway) in completely worthless VB4 & 5 reading material
.
Reading, self-teaching, and experimentation. Not the best way to learn. The best way is to take a class (college or otherwise) on it. Since you understand programming concepts (I assume DarkBasic teaches you that since it\'s a programming language) you\'ve got a start on things. Once the concept of programming is understood, you only need to learn a language.
In the real world, your only viable options are C++ and that other programming langauge people call Java. Visual Basic is another commonly used one, but I\'ve found it\'s only good purpose is to teach programming theory (which you already know).
Find a good book that teaches you how to write C++ code, which is very important! You\'d think all of them would, but they don\'t. A bunch that I have focus on MFC (a GUI library) or are just a collection of various coding samples.
It\'s easy to find what you need: browse for a book that looks like it\'s what you want, and flip through all the pages very fast. If you see anything that looks like a graphical application, don\'t buy it. What you want is straight code, 100% text (there may be illustrations of programming concepts, these are ok
). Once you understand how to code C++, you can move on to writing graphical applications later.
And it\'s always nice to meet another member of the faith
