Hey all, long time no see heh heh.... ( *big wave to LGW )

In RL, I'm dealing with pure chaos right now and may end up skipping another college semester to stabilize things. In the meantime I have about 1100 books at my fingertips to read (mostly about programming languages) and since that's the main thing I will be pursuing in college, I'm eager to dive in.

The thing is, I'm overwhelmed and don't know what programming language to start with.
I'm planning on eventually running windows and linux (probably fedora 8) in dual boot (because linux is awesome), so I know I'm going to have to learn a lot in order to successfully work with both OS's.

Where should I start? C? Java? Visual Basic? Perl? I'm no stranger to learning from books instead of a teacher ( I learn faster that way actually) but I don't want to defeat myself before I even start.

So, I humbly request a senior programmer/coder here to help me help myself !

I would suggest starting with C then Java and then C++. But in any case start with C. Though a pascal like language would be a bit easier for starting up if you have *totally* no idea of programming.

C to learn structured programming, then Java to learn the wonders of pure Object Oriented programming and the C++ to get a headache and combine what you learnt before into one language :P

I learnt a bit Visual Basic once but I never used it, didn't seem very strong, and Perl is a scripting language if I'm not mistaken.

I'm running dual boot too with Ubuntu and Windows although I rarely use windows except for gaming. I do all the programming in linux.

Well I'm no real super programmer but I'm in the last year of an IT University and that's about the order in which I learnt the languages.

Visual Studio is very nice for programming in C because it has a wonderful debugger, so if you want to start in Windows try it out. Dev-C++ is a nice free alternative though if you don't want to become a pirate
Bloodshed Software - Dev-C++

Terrific, thanks.

Alright, I've hit a wall.

I'm going through this beginner's guide for C and I'm doing the hello world exercise. It says it assumes I have basic knowledge of programming, the gives me the script which I type out in notepad then save it to desktop as hello.c

So far so good... now.... how do I compile the blasted thing? It says compile it then click on the exe.... HARUMPH, some guide. I'm doing google search like crazy and there's a lot of different compilers to download (trial versions or shareware).

Man, I feel like there's so many things I have to learn at once (like calculus maybe? I get a headache if I even have to go into advanced algebra)

I'm also a little scared since my college professors might be the same way, and expect me to have some basic knowledge of programming already. THATS WHAT I GOT THESE BOOKS FOR !!! ARGHHH !!!! *tears hair out*

*ahem* but yeah, I'm stuck on the hello world exercise because I don't know how to compile something in windows XP. Renaming it to a batch file doesn't help either.

P.S. Until I land a decent paying job, as far as furthering my own education is concerned, I'm a shameless pirate. Plz don't taze me bro !

Edit: Will try Dev C++ as it seems to include everything needed to learn programming. I just want to make sure I follow an organized learning curve so I don't end up in an area where I can't understand anything at all or end up repeating what I've already learned. I really appreciate the help here.

Haha yes of course you need a compiler first to compile the program you've written. In windows I suggested two programs either Visual Studio or Dev-C++(download it here SourceForge.net: Downloading ...). Although I'm not that legal either I'm too bored of installing VS now so I'll explain how to do it in Dev-C++ although its kinda the same in VS too.

You start it up and go file->new->project->c project->console application
This will create a main.c file in the main window with some code already in it(you may erase it if you want, but put the system("PAUSE"); command at the end of your main otherwise you won't see anything after you run it cause the console will close right after printing hello world).
Then you write your code, and then go Execute->Compile. If there's a compile error(which means you have made som mistake in writing the code) it will be shown at the bottom of the screen. Then go Execute->Run. And voila there you have your first program running :P

ps. batch files are just many auto-executing dos commands in one file. totally different thing from programming
ps2. if you want to manually run the exe created by the compiler(not that it helps you in any way) go to D:\Dev-Cpp or wherever you extracted Dev-C++ and you'll find an .exe file named after your project.

The problem with books is that most avoid promoting a specific compiler so you end up with some very generic explanations on what to do which confuses you like hell when you first start programming

So o give you the general idea: you write your program in a text file. So its just text and can't do anything by itself. Then you run it through a compiler which translates your text into machine code and bundles it into an exe file(or not if you are programming in linux :P). Then you can run the exe file on your computer.

Nice save ! Thanks !

I am going with the Dev-C++ because it does have a tutorial in it to C and everything I need to get started. I don't want to cheat and go with Visual Basic, I want to be a a "real" programmer. (Good enough to write a game engine).

Your post really helped me out, thanks.

BTW, is it supposed to be

#include <stdio.h>

main() pause
{
printf ("Hello, world\n") ;
}

I got the error so I know I did something wrong (incorrect syntax)

I guess its supposed to be

#include <stdio.h>

main()
system ("pause")
{
printf ("Hello, world\n") ;
}

No its:
#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
printf ("Hello, world\n") ;
system("PAUSE");
}

system("PAUSE"); basically pauses your program and waits fot you to press a button if I'm not mistaken. So you want to put it after all your code in the main function

reread sometimes my post cause I have a bad habit of editing them a lot :P

as an additional hint, you will always get two kind of errors: syntax errors which means you have written something wrong(spelling mistake, or syntax mistake) and logical errors which means your idea of the proram is wrong :P Most of the time logical errors will crash your program causing a segmentation fault or something along the lines. But you'll see once you get into pointers and stufff

Ohhhhh so you put system ("Pause") at the end of your console application to get the press any key to continue....

or, before the } line, right?

WHOO HOO !! I just wrote my first program !!

I feel great ! I can't wait to learn more, thanks a lot !

Hehe no problem
By the way, you propably know this by now if you have a good book but he first time I programmed I thought all the code in the program gets executed at once in no specific order. Which I found out to my pain was totally wrong. The code gets executed from top to bottom and from left to right(except in functions and loops in which cases the program jumps to a specific code line and continues from there)

and well yeah...game engine...you have some years in front of you haha It's not as easy as it sounds

Wow, way to go Stepes

__________________
> Pre-Work > System File Checker

Hehe thanks I like sharing what I know in programming when I can

Yeah, I read a couple of book introductions back that some line (forgot what it was called, I guess a function?) if it reads 123 the program reads it as 3 first then 2 then 1. I also figured it would be jumping around during the decision making process (if/else), it really looks complicated and intimidating, but then again, so did pre algebra and trig (and at the end of the semester, I placed an a and b in both classes, respectively).

Thanks again for your help. I'll stay motivated