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Jul - General Chat - How'd you learn programming? New poll - New thread - New reply
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Arisotura
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Posted on 09-11-16 06:20:37 PM Link | Quote
I figure there are quite a few self-taught programmers around. Let's see.



I'm a self-taught programmer. I learnt by fucking around with silly demo code, then attempting to make PCSX2 plugins. Which was a partial success-- I wanted to make a USB plugin, but didn't know nearly enough to make it work. I made a joypad plugin instead, which was a bunch of copypasta from an existing half-crapo plugin and some really dirty crap that only worked due to holy luck.

After a while, I moved on to other things -- iDeaS plugins (never attempt this if you value your sanity), forking DeSmuME to add stupid shit...

The point where I started to actually know what I was doing was when I truly joined projects like Dolphin or DeSmuME.


This also let me realize things when I entered an engineering school. They taught us C in a really fucking terrible way. Like, hey here's a blob of parentheses, have fun figuring out the priority.

It was a good thing I already knew it. I'd probably be disgusted from it otherwise.


All this eventually led me to a state where I can't consider doing other things in my life without getting crap like "omg man don't waste your talent".

They talk as if I was the Albert Einstein of coding. I'm no genius, I'm sure many people can reach the same level of skill as me or better if they're taught properly, and I keep seeing people in the hacking scenes who do things far more impressive than what I can afford to do with my skills and motivation.

And just because I'm good at something doesn't mean I enjoy it. I had to code for Android for an internship. Android is a crapshoot to work with.



How about your stories, guys?

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Kuribo64 -- NSMB2 hacking and other crap
maorgamer322
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Posted on 09-11-16 11:16:24 PM Link | Quote
W3Schools.
RanAS
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Posted on 09-13-16 07:37:34 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by maorgamer322
W3Schools.

Story of the year right here.

Well, actually I learned it through W3Schools too I guess, but I still try to put in pratice some of the examples in the tutorial without having to look it up to see if I actually remember it properly. (test pages and the such) I was going to start using Python, but I guess that didn't exactly happen. Oops. Not that I've fully learned JS either, but either way, I know it I guess.

The reason is that I always wanted to learn programming and having just learned HTML and CSS I thought that JavaScript was the logical next step in terms of web languages. I still don't really understand PHP/SQL and I'm not sure I'll actually try to learn those later. My plan is to learn more about JS, and once I'm more or less done, go to C or C++. I already have a few C++ source files here, so I can see on some aspects it actually isn't that different from JS, which is nice (less work to do trying to figure out the proper syntax).

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even so, they have made me." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Kak

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Posted on 09-13-16 03:04:02 PM Link | Quote
KLayout v3.1
Oh boy.

As I do not count "fucking around with batch scripts" as programming, I'll say that I started at school in late 2011. We were taught C++, and I honestly kinda liked it, though we didn't get very far.

Some knowledge of HTML and CSS came when I had to design custom layouts here. Cue W3Schools.
(the result of this is that when this year we were """""taught""""" HTML using really archaic bullshit like bgcolor, I literally could not stop laughing.)


The PHP experiments came out as a "why not". I remember learning about this in 2014 by looking at the Acmlmboard 2.5 codebase. I ended up making an horrible, horrible mod of AB 2.5.2 that I still have in the external hard drive.

Until late 2015 this "knowledge" stayed like that. Around that time I wanted to see if I could write something that actually worked well. The Jul clone thingy is the fourth of such attempts, which would have died as well if it weren't for a "random" burst of motivation during April. Better SQL knowledge was necessary for something like that, so eventually that got thrown into the mix.


Other than this, I did some small stuff in lua like a boom-plus mod for the first Wario Land game where you can move Wario around using the mouse.

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Joe
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Posted on 09-14-16 05:00:59 PM Link | Quote
I started with QBasic, then moved on to PHP, Python, and various assembly languages.

Eventually I took college classes on C++ and Java, which did a nice job of filling in some of the bits I missed from trying to learn how to do it all myself, and also taught me that I don't like object-oriented programming.

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Nicole

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Posted on 09-15-16 01:58:42 AM Link | Quote
I pretty much learned all my programming skills in various attempts at game development; starting with good old ZZT-OOP. (Hey, it counts! It's even object-oriented, right in the name)

Oh, and in college I was actually taught programming, but just MATLAB, and it was taught by physicists, so... :p

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Nicole - LV 136 - EP 29475313
Zero One
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Posted on 09-15-16 01:56:44 PM (last edited by Zero One at 09-15-16 02:03:30 PM) Link | Quote
Started teaching myself 6 years ago with C# while I was in 6th Form. Wanted to get into games dev, so I picked XNA, which was a very good idea, IMO. Microsoft offered some XNA tutorials, so I quickly got a grasp of both C# and XNA. Continued it into University 3 years ago to start doing games dev as a career. Learned a little Java for Android (garbage, much?), taught myself some C++ with Allegro (worse garbage), then moved on to C++ with UE4, which is pretty great! Recently been teaching myself some Python to pass the time, but I haven't written anything with it yet.

Also a little HTML, CSS, PHP, and a little UnrealScript, but I'll be happy if I never touch them again.

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Tamkis
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Posted on 09-17-16 01:00:54 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Joe
I started with QBasic...


*Tamkis gives Joe a high-five.

It all started in 4th and 5th grade when I began reading old technical manuals in the elementary school's library and saw some BASIC code for old 1980s machines, because I was curious how people write software for computers. Eventually, I began experimenting with GW and QBasic programming for a Computers merit badge requirement in Scouting around 2006. I then picked up some M68k & MIPS R4300i asssembly for Sonic and Super Mario 64 ROM hacking, C++ in a class, and Ti-BASIC during high school. In College, I learned some Visual Basic (for some useful applications and ROM hacking utilities) with a class, C for Genesis homebrew development, Java with a class, Oracle SQL and PL/SQL and web development for an internship, and C# for Unity 3D game development. Most of my skills I have picked up also with game development, with C#/Unity3D development being what I do best.
Q
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Posted on 09-17-16 04:38:54 PM Link | Quote
I played around with some really simple programming throughout much of my life, but I didn't really learn how to program until I started college.


My first year, I took a course in C. It was pretty difficult for me, and I remember staying up all night trying to figure out how to properly allocate and free memory for my implementation of Conway's Game of Life. I learned quite a lot, though, and it made my future experiences with programming a lot easier to handle.

My second year, I took a course in MATLAB. The course was for physics students instead of computer science students, and MATLAB does a lot of things automatically that I had to fuss over with C, so the programming involved felt much simpler. I've used MATLAB a lot since then because it's popular among physicists and some mathematicians, but being aware of the subtle differences between it and most other programming languages (like how arrays start at index 1) makes it awkward to use sometimes.

In my fourth year, I took a course in Python to fulfill a requirement. The course was intended as an "introduction to programming" course for computer science students due to the high failure rate in the aforementioned C course. It was painfully simple, and all the conveniences of Python made it an easy language to pick up after learning C and MATLAB. I learned to really enjoy Python, though, and it's now my language of choice whenever I have to program something.


I don't program very much anymore now since my career path doesn't utilize programming very much, but I'm glad I took the time to learn it, and I still use it to work on personal projects from time to time. In particular, I've been teaching myself a little bit of Processing to use with my art.

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zerojay
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Posted on 09-19-16 10:32:25 PM Link | Quote
Teachers at school told my parents really early on that I was a computer whiz, "buy him his own PC asap", etc... Parents bought me a Mac LCII with a 40MB hard drive. Received Symantec's Think C development environment for Christmas when I was 12 (back when it was like $500 and long before free IDEs were a thing). Started writing my own games and learning how to deal with physics before I had my physics classes in high school which was pretty helpful. Moved on to writing a chess game and found I had more fun trying to create more human-like AI opponents for it than anything else. Spent the next two years working on AI for it. Learned some C++ when I got older, dropped Windows as an OS back in '99, picked up some scripting languages here and there. Didn't have much time to program anymore with a wife and kid. Working in games currently as a build and release manager, mostly not programming unless I'm scripting stuff or maybe doing some python work for build servers.
dotUser
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Posted on 09-19-16 11:52:43 PM Link | Quote
GNU dotUser 2.1.2-git        File: ~/.user/makepost.py
Throw words at a wall of text and see how it breaks, and sometimes, it doesn't!

I learned most of my coding skills from friends and playing with stuff. I am terrible anyway.

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phase
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Posted on 09-20-16 04:17:47 AM (last edited by phase at 09-20-16 04:27:44 AM) Link | Quote

Years ago I wanted to learn how to "make video games". I thought it would be simple to create the game I was playing on my GameCube, but obviously there's a lot more to it. Without all the tools to create games that are out now, like GameMaker and Unity, I stumbled upon Java. Searching for how to make a game in it brings up millions of results, so I got cracking. After struggling with tutorials for weeks, I was able to make my first Hello World. I didn't know what static meant, nor did I understand OOP, but it was definitely a milestone.

The next language I tackled was JavaScript. "Similar name, completely different language." I loved making websites that had fancy 3D text or little games. I was able to see elements in Java in JS, such as functions, and I learned that most languages revolve around a key set of structures.

I dabbled in Python a little bit. Even now I'm not great at Python. I can get by, and I can read code, but I couldn't write anything complex off the top of my head. I've never used classes in any of my Python scripts, because I only used them as scripts. I didn't do anything complex, so I didn't need to learn anything complex. The same happened with Bash, though I've learned how to use the Unix toolset quite well.

I've learned plenty of languages since then, and have switched my focus from video games to language design.

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brian151
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Posted on 11-10-16 04:17:19 AM Link | Quote

WIP



My first real coding experience would have been...BATCH

This was, of, probably 5-6 years ago. I was watching youtube videos, and stumbled upon videos about hacking school computers. I personally do not think batch isn't programming, or cannot be. Sadly, I never got very far with it. But, there are/were examples out there of what batch is truly capable of, in the right hands? (ever heard of batch paint? just to name one)

I don't entirely remember how it all went from there

I briefly tried C++ once, went quite poor
I've had experiences with Python, GameMaker, Sploder Online Game Creator, and some others...

I have also tried ROM hacking on a few occassions, with limited results.

I can't really say exactly at what point I decided I definitely want to make games, as I've forgotten that.

I currently am using JavaScript to write HRML5 apps, though I truthfully am anything but thrilled about the "new" APIs and hardware that in EVERY way are a step backwards in functionality from software renderers and plugins/plugin APIs.

I take interest in hacking/modding games, reverse-engineering file formats (or entire programs), porting old games so they don't die, and ripping resources/data from a given game or program. I hope to seriously improve my understanding of binary file formats, and possibly get into disassembly of compiled code. I strive more for making a quality product, and if I can have my say, I will not be producing rushed-out half-broken barely innovative pieces of junk at all. I am most at home dissecting how another developer has put something together (or trying to re-build their system, sometimes from scratch), and perhaps learning from them things I should or should not do in my own projects. Sometimes I get frustrated, however...when I can't figure something out, or am stuck with the most tedious of methods to get the job done.
sammyrms1
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Posted on 03-11-17 03:56:35 AM Link | Quote
In High School, I started off with Snap (similar to Scratch) and Lua, then I moved on to JavaScript. On my senior year, I did a lot of coding with Java. It was pretty complicated, but once I understood the language, I got used to it more often. Nowadays I'm doing some coding with C.

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Lunaria

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Posted on 03-15-17 11:20:09 AM Link | Quote
Most of the stuff I have learned have been through scripting stuff for Zelda Classic. The scripting language is hardly optimal and not really a "real" programming language. It uses C style formatting though, and a lot of the logic you work with is the same. I tried to take some C++ programming courses last fall, that went, uh, worse than I expected. I mean, I cleared the exam, I just never finished the hand-in you were supposed to do. So I sort of blame that more on being burned out and depressed rather than a lack of knowledge/skill.

I will say though, that a lot of the language structure seem kind of arse and old-fashioned. The include lists gets a bit absurd ant the header file structure is needlessly unintuitive and kind of backwards IMO. I realize why it's like that, and some of the benefits of it, but surely there has to be a better way. ;

Anyway, programming has always just been a means to an end for me, I don't really have an interest in programming itself, so I wouldn't really call me competent or anything.

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Delpolo
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Posted on 03-15-17 09:13:48 PM Link | Quote
I've always been somewhat interested in programming but never really bothered to actually spend time to independently learn it... In high school I stumbled upon Danmakufu and wrote a few bullet pattern scripts but didn't really polish or finalize anything, and we had a computers class that included visual programming for LEGO Mindstorms (image), then I later had a general physics class that used LabVIEW for more visual programming, but I had never learned an actual programming language.

Since I was getting back into university after a long break I wanted to ease myself back into classes again, and so last semester I took an online course which taught about the fundamentals of programming and basic C++. I quite enjoyed it! Writing my own programs outside of the curriculum definitely made me remember and practice programming so in the end I found the course itself fairly easy, although now that the course is over and I'm taking other classes I'm finding it hard to motivate myself to study C++ independently...

Really, my only regret with the class is that, uh, it seriously only taught the basics of programming, and not, say, how to write Windows applications or whatever. Only command line stuff. At least if I do want to study stuff myself then I know what to aim for!

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Cuber456

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Posted on 03-17-17 04:06:42 AM Link | Quote
Java courses in college. First the basics, then learned about data structures. Got sick of it all and put it down for awhile.

TCRF ignited a drive to pick programming back up. Being able to write tools from scratch allowed me to become better equipped to search through games on my own terms. That way I wasn't waiting on tools from people. In some cases, hacking tools for specific games aren't being worked in the first place so it is almost a must.

That said, can't say I'm a great programmer. I just know enough to be dangerous and to wiggle bits to get what I want.
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Posted on 03-19-17 01:38:22 AM Link | Quote


I learned from Khan Academy in like 6th grade, and used Khan Academy to make probably the worst game ever.
(I felt accomplished at the time by a lot).

I used python for a little, but then I stopped since it's always dependency this, dependency that, and there is no easy way to compile applications. I learned arduino code to play around with, and it turned out to be almost the same as Khan Academy. After finding out that Khan Academy is based off of processing, I quickly was situated with processing. I honestly think it is a good language, it has pretty much all you need, plus there is ways to import java libraries (I think). I'm actually coding a game with it, but I'm kind of scared that lag may be a problem. I know some C++ basics, but I can't seem to find the line between good old, simple print to screen C++ and Qt Creator. Does anyone know a C++ ide or something useful for game creation, kinda like processing? I don't have a problem with processing, but I want to see what other options are out there. I'm not coding in straight Java because:
1. I don't like that public static stuff (I know it's simple, it just annoys me).
2. I don't know exactly how the code would work together to form a game-like application.
3. Processing is literally a simpler java, so no point in wasting my time figuring out problems more complex than they need to be.
4. Time.
I've heard C++ is good to use, but all I really see are those easy .cpp print to screen things and that complicated Qt Stuff. I've worked with Qt before, but even then all I did was add extra sprite images to an editor. The most complex thing I've probably done with it was write a super buggy liquid renderer that renders liquids forever... Then I saw the build of CoinKiller with liquids working awesomely in my jaw dropped. Well, I guess I'm strong in the language I've know for years: processing. Ugh, I've literally written editors for my game, in that, which makes sense in a way, but Qt would be more professional. Oh well, I don't want to deal with that for now.

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Nella carne io sono uno, ma nello spirito, che sono e per sempre saranno sette.


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