9 replies to this topic

[mang0]

Hey codeall!
I'm from England, United Kingdom. I have a cat called Breezy, and run on Ubuntu. (Currently 11.10).

Glad we got that out of the way. I've just recently got interested in programming. I've fiddled with HTML, but I quickly grew bored of it, and wanted to move on to something more advanced. I started looking at a bit of Python, and I downloaded a couple of eBooks - Learn Python The Hard Way, and Invent With Python. I've quite enjoyed them so far, but I don't really understand them very much. So my question(s!) is (are!) this (these!):

Imagine I've never coded before. Ever. I've never touched any code, and I don't understand anything about variables or strings and stuff. What do I do, where do I go? What language should I start off with? Is Python the language I should start with, or should I start with something like Visual Basic, or qBasic?

Then: What IDE should I use? I've got Eclipse installed, so I suppose I could use that? I only installed it for some test work I was doing for someone, so I've not got the faintest idea how to use it. All my Python code has been written in gedit, and run through terminal using `python3 example.py` or such like. (I started with Python 2.7, quickly migrated to Python 3).

Thanks for your time, and the answer to the questions. Goodnight, I'll be back tomorrow morning!

[WingedPanther]

Welcome aboard! I've got six cats, and upgraded to 11.10 this morning.

[RhetoricalRuvim]

Welcome to CodeCall.

I don't have any cats, and I have 10.04 LTS sitting on another partition of my computer's hard drive.

For your first question: what do you want to do with programming? Operating system design or web development or just general programs?

As for the other question, what's an IDE?

[Alexander]

Welcome aboard. BASIC (as it was a long time ago) could certainly be a nice first taste of programming. You can design simple applications, calculators, games and not too much more without using the system like other programming languages do.

Python is a fairly good beginner choice, however not everyone finds it simple or intuitive. You'll just have to look around and try out some languages, none of them may feel entirely right until you've worked in it for awhile.

Eclipse is fairly large, I was not sure it was a Python IDE (primarily Java, or C/C++ with CDT) so you may wish to look for a smaller integrated development environment. Things such as Geany can run the script automatically without console commands if you do not need a full blown IDE, but something slightly better than gEdit.

Welcome to our community by the way,
Alexander.

[mang0]

I just spent ages writing a reply to all you guys, and then my browser crashed and I lost it. I'll have to write it all again! *sigh*

WingedPanther said:

Welcome aboard! I've got six cats, and upgraded to 11.10 this morning.

Ubuntu cats ftw! [ATTACH=CONFIG]4516[/ATTACH]

RhetoricalRuvim said:

Welcome to CodeCall.

I don't have any cats, and I have 10.04 LTS sitting on another partition of my computer's hard drive.

For your first question: what do you want to do with programming? Operating system design or web development or just general programs?

As for the other question, what's an IDE?

Get some cats, otherwise you are no longer a programmer. Or an Ubuntu user. (Hehe!) You know 12.04 LTS is coming out next month right?

I'm not really sure what I want to do with programming. I suppose I'd like to start off with something like making calculators, and basic stuff like that, and then move on to something more advanced. Perhaps also make some/a text based adventure game/s, like "You are in a forest. There are exits North, East, and South." kind of thing. Not sure.

An IDE is an Intergrated Development Enviroment. It's basically a program that you write programs in (programception!) and you can then run your code through. For example, IDLE is a Python IDE. It's like a text editor, but you can just hit one key to run your program, rather than what I've been doing in gedit, where you write your code, and then run it from console.

Alexander said:

Welcome aboard. BASIC (as it was a long time ago) could certainly be a nice first taste of programming. You can design simple applications, calculators, games and not too much more without using the system like other programming languages do.

Python is a fairly good beginner choice, however not everyone finds it simple or intuitive. You'll just have to look around and try out some languages, none of them may feel entirely right until you've worked in it for awhile.

Eclipse is fairly large, I was not sure it was a Python IDE (primarily Java, or C/C++ with CDT) so you may wish to look for a smaller integrated development environment. Things such as Geany can run the script automatically without console commands if you do not need a full blown IDE, but something slightly better than gEdit.

Welcome to our community by the way,
Alexander.

Hey, thanks. I was really thinking about starting to learn a bit of BASIC, when I found out that it doesn't run on Linux - which to be honest, is to be expected as it's a MicroSoft "invention". Shame. Stupid BASIC.

Python is a good choice, that's the reason why I chose it, after some discussion with people about what I should do. Also, as a bonus, Blender (3D modelling, animation, and editing suite - find the site here) is written with C++ and also with Python. They (blender foundation) have a great Python API, with which all the addons for Blender are written. So if I got good enough at Python, that's also a possible, although I'm not sure if that's what I'd want to do.

As to the IDE, Eclipse is indeed fairly large, but I think I'm going to stick with it, as I can write many different languages in it, and it's got a very nice work flow, and organisation. It works with Python when you add the PyDev addon (which I've done), and it seems to work out quite nicely.

I think I might stick with Eclipse and Python for now, not sure though.

[TheCompBoy]

Welcome to CodeCall!

[fread]

Welcome to Codecall, Mang0!

[mang0]

Thanks TheCompBoy, thanks fread!

[RhetoricalRuvim]

mang0 said:

Or an Ubuntu user.

I guess you could say that; I rarely ever use Ubuntu, mostly because I have almost everything set up on Windows 7, and also because I'm more used to Windows. I really don't like using Macintosh, though, I couldn't even play a video file by pressing return, that one time.

As for cats - and pets, for that matter - I'd rather prefer to get a bird than a cat.

[Alexander]

mang0 said:

Hey, thanks. I was really thinking about starting to learn a bit of BASIC, when I found out that it doesn't run on Linux - which to be honest, is to be expected as it's a MicroSoft "invention". Shame. Stupid BASIC.

BASIC started coming out when Bill Gates was maybe not even a decade old!

The Interpreters (or Visual BASIC) may be specific to Windows (they were specific to a lot of systems before Windows, there was no Windows 1964!) and there are many out there for systems ranging from wrist watches to BSD in a toaster.

yabasic is one option for Linux, as well as bwbasic and many others. Some implement more libraries so than others (i.e. liberty basic, darkbasic) and some range from free to costly. You'll just have to do some searching. Regardless, it's a nice little thing to play with to learn loops or make mini games if you still wish to try.

Alexander.