Learning how to program, where to begin?

[Persona]

Hi friends,

I have no experience whatsoever of programming and programming looks like a task that not everyone are capable of. However, I have a great will in programming, because my end goal is to program a Bnet chat/telnet-client bot.

For all of the programmers here on VL.com, how long did it take each of you guys to start from zero knowledge of programming, to being able to program a basic functionable Bnet bot that can recieve and respond to commands from its master?

What's the best route to start learning? Did you take programming classes in school? Or can programming be learned straight from reading a few books? If so, I hear that C++ is one of the most common programming language, can you give me recommendation for these books? Finally, when do you make the transition from reading books, and fiddling with simple programs, to programming bots?

[Adron]

It took me 8 years from I started programming until I had written my first bot. I learnt Pascal, C and C++ from reading books.

And I don't recommend learning programming because you "want to write a bot and that's it". It's too much work to learn just for a bot, you'd be better off using someone else's bot.

[Persona]

Haha.. I was actually thinking that the journey would be fun, not the destination. However, 8 years is a long time.

What percentage of programming knowledge that you've learned would you say that are mandatory knowledge to program a chat-client bot? A similar simple bot that Blizzard had on their web page, but unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding the source for it.

[Psycho]

Since you have no knowledge of programming I would recommend Visual Basic first. It would be easier to learn C/C++ afterwards. It might delay your destination or make it easier. It depends on how fast you learn and pick up things. Don't get *** for Dummies or Sam's 24 Hour books. You need to get a book that doesn't focus on how fast you will learn it, just one that gives good examples and other good tips.

[MyndFyre]

Since you have no knowledge of programming I would recommend Visual Basic first. It would be easier to learn C/C++ afterwards. It might delay your destination or make it easier. It depends on how fast you learn and pick up things. Don't get *** for Dummies or Sam's 24 Hour books. You need to get a book that doesn't focus on how fast you will learn it, just one that gives good examples and other good tips.

Hey now, C for Dummies is a FANTASTIC book.  Don't knock * for Dummies books, they're awesome.

After already having aboiut 3 years of programming experience (mostly web-based database work), when I decided I wanted to learn how to design a bot, it took me a solid 5 months to figure out networking stuff.

I would recommend C or a C-based language (C++, Java, C#) to learn as opposed to VB.  Visual Basic will greatly speed up your journey, but as a teaching language, IMO it teaches you bad things because you can move through it quickly. 

That's not to say it doesn't happen in other languages.  I ended up writing three brand-new iterations of my original bot because I hadn't spent enough time effectively designing my original bot or its descendants.  This is definitely a good way to learn how to practice design, but it'll be frustrating if you aren't interested in programming for the sake of programming rather than just making a bot.

If you set your goal to being a good programmer, IMO you'll be able to go much farther than just making a good bot.

[Warrior]

Visual Basic builds up bad habbits like ignoring case in functions and stuff but don't get me wrong it's a powerful programming language for making programs fast.

[R.a.B.B.i.T]

I recommend learning QBASIC or Batch first off, since they are quite simple and rudimentary.  I started off with them and moved up as I got more confident.  I've also been programming for about 8 years, but I'm no where near as good as Adron.  As that shows, it all depends on how hard you're willing to work to learn what you want to.

[Meh]

I recommend Delphi or Pascal. Its kind of basic more like a high level language.

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

Heh, 8 years as well.

You should do Python. There's an excellent beginners book online (www.diveintopython.org), it's a fast-growing language, it's state-of-the-art, and you can do really powerful things, even while still a newbie. Check it out.

www.python.org

[Yegg]

I didn't enjoy reading dive into python. It only taught me a few more things about tuples and about the insert function for lists. However, the python.org tutorial was the best beginners tutorial for Python I've ever read.

[Corrupt]

I have sams teach yourslef VB in 24 hours and to be honest it hasn't really helped me at all, I don't know when i sit down and read a book like that I lose intrest because it's so BASIC it's like click on this button and drag thing here or kick proportys and i don't know it's just annoying i wish I could find something that was stright to the point but also some what basic. I hope that this makes sense lol -_-

[QwertyMonster]

Well, what are  you planning to do with your language you learn (Visual basic?) ?

If its connecting to things, learn winsock control. Basically just open up a new standard exe in visual basic (if thats what u learning) and fiddle around with things.

There is also looking at other sources, but that leads to copying and pasting.

Please supply more information on what language and what you plan to do with the language.

Hope this helps!

[Yegg]

I think we need more books like Sam's Teach Yourself [language here] in 24 hours. If only we had one for every programming language...

[Warrior]

I  find any books that say they can teach you how to learn [language here] in [time here] to be BS. What if it takes me two days to read the  book =P. Besides, no one can know a language well enough to do anything useful in 2 months let alone 24 hours.

[R.a.B.B.i.T]

I like the books by Que Publishing, which are aimed more at being a good programmer rather than a fast one.