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[eerr]

Programming never gets far when I occasionally get the urge to try it, sadly. I usually lose my way and get completely confused around day 2. I've tried a variety of languages and none have really stuck, sadly. I get the syntax and all that like a savant but when it comes to actually making a program that actually does something I get nowhere fast.

Programming is slooooooooooooow.

Just enabling touch-buttons on the iphone is easily an hour of work.

Enabling a msql-lite database is weeks of work.(previously knowing nothing about it)

got that from my brother.

Now if you want something fast, for god's sake find an engine, a library, something that speeds development.

[Moogie]

What I'd really love to find is some kind of repository of example tasks or challenges, ranked by difficulty and/or assumed knowledge. My biggest problem right now is having any idea how to apply the theory stuff I've been learning into a practical application. Admittedly, part of that is a motivation issue; I'm sure I could think up many little programs to build, but my brain just gets scared at the idea of starting out with no guidance and I end up going back to reading about it, rather than actually doing it. It's the daunting task of getting over that first hurdle, when you have no experience or the confidence of past projects to build upon. Once I get the ball rolling, I'm sure it'll start getting easier!

[Frajic]

What I'd really love to find is some kind of repository of example tasks or challenges, ranked by difficulty and/or assumed knowledge. My biggest problem right now is having any idea how to apply the theory stuff I've been learning into a practical application. Admittedly, part of that is a motivation issue; I'm sure I could think up many little programs to build, but my brain just gets scared at the idea of starting out with no guidance and I end up going back to reading about it, rather than actually doing it. It's the daunting task of getting over that first hurdle, when you have no experience or the confidence of past projects to build upon. Once I get the ball rolling, I'm sure it'll start getting easier!

Project Euler fits that bill nicely, but it's mostly focused on mathematics. Still, you should give it a try.

[nenjin]

I've gotten inspired by reading this thread and decided to start learning how to code.

It's difficult for me, because I'm not very math/logic oriented. Syntax and how to structure the use of functions, ect... have always been my big stumbling block. The last time I really tried to do anything like coding.....was in the late 80s with BASICA.

I'm starting with Python, since accessible terms and lots of examples is what I need. It's taken me, oh, about 4 hours to write a very basic text intro to an RPG, where you pick your race and gender. My brain is kind of on fire as I see dozens of ways to approach a very simple problem.

Anyways, gotta crawl before you can stand up, then fall over.

[Willfor]

Knowing you're going to fall down a lot is half the battle. Unfortunately, the other half is not falling down, which tends to get more difficult.

Good luck!

[nenjin]

I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by saying this but...

This has turned out to go a lot smoother than I thought it would. Of course, I'm only doing a text adventure, but halfway through that tutorial web-site, I stopped at his text adventure example and decided to finish my own work before moving on.

At first I felt like I wasn't really understanding anything, I was just copy pasting someone else's framework and fumbling through it. But once the concepts started to sink in, especially about how functions communicate with the main program, and vicea versa, all sorts of custom functions and ideas started coming into my head.

I figured out a lot of novice-level concepts on my own, or with a little additional web reading and almost no code splicing.

I'm sure anyone with a lick of Python experience would look at my game and see about 100 places it could be trimmed down and optimized. But I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring out all the functions I wanted (making my text adventure a pseudo-rpg text adventure) in only about a 24 hour period.

[Muz]

Take a university level course. Or if you can't afford it, my uni has videos on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/unswelearning#g/c/6B940F08B9773B9F

The courses are very well done, easy to learn. You won't get the advantage of doing assignments and getting some practice in, but it'll explain everything from start to finish. There's also quite a lot of humor and fun conversations.

I've gone to watching the lectures instead of watching TV, it's just how entertaining they are

The course is on C mainly.

[Moogie]

Not sure why I didn't spot this before, but there seems to be a rather nice thread dedicated to helping coding newbies over in Creative.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57518.0

[Siquo]

Programming is slooooooooooooow.

This is true.

Enabling a msql-lite database is weeks of work.(previously knowing nothing about it)

This is pertinently untrue. I got a staticly compiled sqlite up and working in 3 evenings, and I had started learning c++ just a few months before that. There's a few tricky spots but the sqlite documentation is very nice.
What will cost time is designing your database, setting it up, and designing your functions in a way that keeps it nice and maintained. Bonus points for async multi-threading. That will put you back months

Not sure why I didn't spot this before, but there seems to be a rather nice thread dedicated to helping coding newbies over in Creative.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57518.0

Yeah, that's the go-to place where people don't argue about which language is better...