Learning coding and such.

[Creaturedude]

Aside from taking college courses, whats the best way to learn to code? I've tried Codecademy, but it doesn't make a bit of sense. I know RPG Maker is kind of a way to "cheat" the coding aspect, but if I wanted to do a non rpg maker game, I'd basically need to know raw programming. I'm looking specifically at python and java. Thanks in advance for the feedback!

[BellyOfTheWubblies]

I took a course last semester as an off-major course to fill my schedule, but outside of a college course and codecademy, the best I could recommend is looking at something like http://www.cplusplus.com/ but the python equivalent and just practicing the functions and syntax. You can also check reddit for subs like python bots and stuff. People will post their source code and explain what the bot does, so you can look over how a full on program works.

The only solid advice I can give that 100% for sure works is just to keep at it. People learn differently, so maybe all this won't work for you, but something will. No one is unteachable, just people learn differently. I'm sure you'll make something great once you figure it all out.

As an aside, if you're willing to drop a little bit of money, there are books on like Amazon that teach pretty well like a college textbook. It should have coding exercises in them for you to try to get used to the compilers and stuff. Also, as you used RPGMaker as an example, learning pseudocode is actually a really good tool to get started. It'll teach you 'this goes here and this tells this what to do'. Then you just need to learn how to write 'this goes here' in actual code, which isn't too difficult.

[Creaturedude]

Ahh I see. Thanks for the reply!

[EndercreeperMugen]

For me, I'm self-taught. So I can't offer much advice in this case, sorry
I did find that learning by myself was a good experience, but that may not be the way everyone learns best.

[TETRO]

Aside from taking college courses, whats the best way to learn to code? I've tried Codecademy, but it doesn't make a bit of sense. I know RPG Maker is kind of a way to "cheat" the coding aspect, but if I wanted to do a non rpg maker game, I'd basically need to know raw programming. I'm looking specifically at python and java. Thanks in advance for the feedback!

Yeah, Codecademy is only useful if you already have some coding knowledge and that's coming from someone who programs professionally. I've taken several of it's courses and done well with them but I often thought "if someone already didn't have some basic knowledge in this stuff, they'd be pretty confused".

Starting with python isn't a bad idea. That's the language I started with. It's nice because you can understand everything you're using right from the start. For Java meanwhile, if you're just starting out there are certain things you'll have to include in your code that you're not going to understand until you get further into your understanding of the language.

I started learning in college, but I'm sure if you wanted to be more self-taught, you can search around the internet for some basic tutorials until you find something that makes sense to you.

Let me ask you this, how much programming do you know? What sort of concepts do you already understand?

[MeTheMe]

I might recommend GameMaker, the free edition is fine, it has a lot of useful drag and drop programming tools, but it also has a very good basic programming language itself you can use instead for more control. As for learning it, GameMaker has some very nice tutorials on youtube, but the basic of coding will still help. I actually used lynda.com for a crash course in basic programming and coding, so I had a foundation to put further coding on. Hopefully that helps a little!

[merlovinit]

Aside from taking college courses, whats the best way to learn to code? I've tried Codecademy, but it doesn't make a bit of sense. I know RPG Maker is kind of a way to "cheat" the coding aspect, but if I wanted to do a non rpg maker game, I'd basically need to know raw programming. I'm looking specifically at python and java. Thanks in advance for the feedback!

I know several people who are self-taught, including myself. Nothing beats setting goals for yourself and pushing yourself to complete them. You will learn the most this way.

[Salanth]

I have learned python from this tutorial here. Some of it is outdated, some tutorials are better than others. Pick and choose what looks interesting. I'll tell you what I found the most useful and how I learned Python.

What I'd recommend is that you go through the syntax and understand that, and go through multiple beginners tutorials whilst you are at it. After that I really recommend tat you read Think Python; it is free, and it is really good at teaching you how to actually think about how to solve programming problems. I am going to give this advice with a caveat, I am still somewhat of a novice myself, and I get the feeling that I these tutorials, for instance, don't really give you enough to really get a feel of how to organize the code in the big picture. That, however, might be something you are not going to get without experience? It is something I am just about to start to tackle myself in my own programming.

[Creaturedude]

Aside from taking college courses, whats the best way to learn to code? I've tried Codecademy, but it doesn't make a bit of sense. I know RPG Maker is kind of a way to "cheat" the coding aspect, but if I wanted to do a non rpg maker game, I'd basically need to know raw programming. I'm looking specifically at python and java. Thanks in advance for the feedback!

Yeah, Codecademy is only useful if you already have some coding knowledge and that's coming from someone who programs professionally. I've taken several of it's courses and done well with them but I often thought "if someone already didn't have some basic knowledge in this stuff, they'd be pretty confused".

Starting with python isn't a bad idea. That's the language I started with. It's nice because you can understand everything you're using right from the start. For Java meanwhile, if you're just starting out there are certain things you'll have to include in your code that you're not going to understand until you get further into your understanding of the language.

I started learning in college, but I'm sure if you wanted to be more self-taught, you can search around the internet for some basic tutorials until you find something that makes sense to you.

Let me ask you this, how much programming do you know? What sort of concepts do you already understand?

I want to learn Python because Blender uses it. Thats the main reason I chose Python. And I figured Java would work well with a Flash based platformer.

As for pas experience, i know a little bit of HTML amd CCS, and thats it.

[Creaturedude]

I might recommend GameMaker, the free edition is fine, it has a lot of useful drag and drop programming tools, but it also has a very good basic programming language itself you can use instead for more control. As for learning it, GameMaker has some very nice tutorials on youtube, but the basic of coding will still help. I actually used lynda.com for a crash course in basic programming and coding, so I had a foundation to put further coding on. Hopefully that helps a little!

I'll def check those out!

[Creaturedude]

I have learned python from this tutorial here. Some of it is outdated, some tutorials are better than others. Pick and choose what looks interesting. I'll tell you what I found the most useful and how I learned Python.

What I'd recommend is that you go through the syntax and understand that, and go through multiple beginners tutorials whilst you are at it. After that I really recommend tat you read Think Python; it is free, and it is really good at teaching you how to actually think about how to solve programming problems. I am going to give this advice with a caveat, I am still somewhat of a novice myself, and I get the feeling that I these tutorials, for instance, don't really give you enough to really get a feel of how to organize the code in the big picture. That, however, might be something you are not going to get without experience? It is something I am just about to start to tackle myself in my own programming.

Awesome, I'll definitely check those out!

[Speedyblupi]

If you want to do something simple and intuitive that's easy to learn how to use, but not necessarily easy to get to do what you want it to, you could try game maker. It does have bugs, and some things take a long time to implement because there's a lot of clicking and dragging, but it can still be used to make really good games (e.g. undertale).

Understanding the logic of coding helps, but understanding code itself isn't necessary - you can use code in gamemaker, or you can use the drag and drop interface, or some combination of the two. A combination of code and drag-and-drop is generally the best way to be able to get complicated things to work while making the simple stuff easy).

It's not good for graphics that aren't sprite based, though there is some capacity for 3D if you want to learn how to code it.

[Rendezvore]

Understanding the logic of coding helps, but understanding code itself isn't necessary - you can use code in gamemaker, or you can use the drag and drop interface, or some combination of the two. A combination of code and drag-and-drop is generally the best way to be able to get complicated things to work while making the simple stuff easy).

That's pretty much what I was going to say about TyranoBuilder. If anyone is interested, Tyrano in a simplified visual novel designer around $15~ You can learn the logic of coding through a combination of the drag-and-drop wysiwyg interface and the versatile list of Tyrano script tags and Python language can enhance things even further. You can mix and match all three methods together, even all on the same scene layout if needed. It will require your own art assets of character expressions to make a nice looking story and is not really useful for anything other than visual novel style games, but for the price I found it a lot of fun to mess around and learn with.

[Zekeki]

TheCherno has some really good video tutorial series on youtube for Java and C++. I recommend watching those to really get going, here's a link.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheChernoProject

[Striker]

Self taught and have been coding for a few years now. There are many paths to learning how to be a programmer, but it ultimately comes down to a few things.

What do you want to make? (I enjoy game development so made a very simple game)
What language & tools are best suited to this task? (Unity, Visual Studio, C#)

I learned via a "Strongly Typed" language known as C#. I utilized the Unity Game Development Engine, and I mostly work on Android games. The key is to understand "Scope" and setting realistic goals/tasks for yourself that are also fun/entertaining as you do them. Otherwise losing motivation early on is very easy as developing programs that mean nothing to you, have no real application beyond practice, and are boring makes it harder to maintain interest in further developing them. Most programming languages carry over most of the knowledge you gained from learning another. The difference is their utilization, syntax, and available tools. Thus the project you seek to work on will dictate the tools/languages you should likely use.

https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/pro ... r-tutorial

If an introduction to the Unity Engine, Object Oriented Programming, and what goes into basic game development is your goal this is a solid place to start. By the end you will understand the basics of Unity, how scripts work, their relationships with one another, variables, how to spawn/Instantiate objects, etc. This is very simple stuff, but will give you an idea of how it all works, and allow you to consider what to do next (modify the existing game with new features for practice or start something new). Best of luck!

[Creaturedude]

Hey guys, thanks for all the replies! I'm too lazy to reply to them all at the moment. :p But, very much appreciated.

[MirceaKitsune]

Honestly, as a coder myself, I'm not quire sure what to advice; I'm not someone who learns stuff from a book in the classroom, especially since I'm dyslexic and have an extremely hard time learning new things nowadays.

Frankly, the way I learned coding was simply by looking at the source codes of projects I enjoy using. I read through them until I understood what most things mean, then got started by making my own changes and contributions. The FPS Xonotic has a lot of stuff initially made by me a decade ago, back when it was called Nexuiz and I first got into the game then started making SVN patches for it.

Other than that, video tutorials; I mostly used these to learn Blender and 3D animation, but they work for learning code too. Watching someone do something as they explain how they do it is surprisingly effective.

[fieldmousse]

I've found I learn best from reading books.
I like to learn as much as I can about a language, then try to build my own project.

I would choose Python over Java
Java isn't as flexible as Python and it enforces outdated OOP practices

[Thagrahn]

I use books and websites as guides, but for the most part, my programming skills were learned through trial'n'error. I will admit that I don't have very high coding skills, I do understand the basic concepts.

I believe the newest version of Game Maker world on Java, but also has plug'n'program shortcuts. I don't remember if that's the version that can convert PnP commands to code, but that is one way to are how things work on the basic level.