Learn You Some Code on Humble Bundle

[shubla]

Everyone who posts on a game forum about learning coding is trying to learn to make games.

well they should stop such nonsense and try to make money instead

[TurtleHermit]

Everyone who posts on a game forum about learning coding is trying to learn to make games.

well they should stop such nonsense and try to make money instead

That is something that might happen eventually, but I'm not aiming for this.

Get Unity free version. It lets you get something playable really quickly (as evidenced by deluge of trash Unity games on Steam), which is great for staying motivated. And C# is a decent enough beginner language. Plus they have some good tutorial projects that you can follow along and learn.

When did OP say that he wanted to make games?
I dont see any reason for why he should use unity.
I dont think C# is a good language either, if he wants something like C# he should go for java.

What comes to studying programming in university... (or college as some call it ?)
At least in Finland, you dont learn programming in university. You learn computer science, the programming part you will have to learn by yourself by your own projects and such. But you can make networks and learn the more theoretical stuff, which is very useful.

Quick glance with my friend over the offers in my town and it seems that C# is pretty solid here, so I would want to at least try it in some point together with java, then pick up what suits me better later on... but first, C. As I will try to hit university, C is a must there for begin with.

[neeco]

blah blah blah

What the fuck are You even doing in this thread? Your post has nothing of value...

Lol rekt. Reading the post is a good thing to do before typing.

[shubla]

Quick glance with my friend over the offers in my town and it seems that C# is pretty solid here, so I would want to at least try it in some point together with java, then pick up what suits me better later on... but first, C. As I will try to hit university, C is a must there for begin with.

Language is not that important, but you should still avoid C# as microsoft is going to go bankrupt soon for sure.

[MagicManICT]

Been there to check the stuff out, talked with students at those. Most of them decided to say it's just a waste of time, purely because You're scrapped between a hell of things, not making You any good in all of them and doesn't let You focus on one thing... unless You want to drop out.

Taking a class or two through a local college is about the group learning experience and having an instructor there that can help get through mental blocks. And I didn't necessarily mean to imply a community or two year college there. A tech school that offers programming would be just as good, and they usually have people retired or "between jobs" as instructors.

Now if we want to rant on the issues behind a community college and a two year degree... I think that's for another thread.

Language is not that important, but you should still avoid C# as microsoft is going to go bankrupt soon for sure.

I agree with you about language. Learn to program, and they all come fairly easy. C/C++ is probably the exception as the rules are pretty loose and they can trip up newbs that haven't had to deal with the language's eccentricities before.

I'm not sure what kind of crack you're smoking, but Microsoft ain't going anywhere for a good long time. Windows is still 80+% of the desktop market share, and Office has a sizable chunk of productivity software market despite Google and OpenOffice.

[shubla]

Been there to check the stuff out, talked with students at those. Most of them decided to say it's just a waste of time, purely because You're scrapped between a hell of things, not making You any good in all of them and doesn't let You focus on one thing... unless You want to drop out.

Taking a class or two through a local college is about the group learning experience and having an instructor there that can help get through mental blocks. And I didn't necessarily mean to imply a community or two year college there. A tech school that offers programming would be just as good, and they usually have people retired or "between jobs" as instructors.

Now if we want to rant on the issues behind a community college and a two year degree... I think that's for another thread.

Language is not that important, but you should still avoid C# as microsoft is going to go bankrupt soon for sure.

I agree with you about language. Learn to program, and they all come fairly easy. C/C++ is probably the exception as the rules are pretty loose and they can trip up newbs that haven't had to deal with the language's eccentricities before.

I'm not sure what kind of crack you're smoking, but Microsoft ain't going anywhere for a good long time. Windows is still 80+% of the desktop market share, and Office has a sizable chunk of productivity software market despite Google and OpenOffice.

Nazi germany was a great nation, but collapsed quickly.
Microsoft will have the same fate.

[Astarisk]

Quick glance with my friend over the offers in my town and it seems that C# is pretty solid here, so I would want to at least try it in some point together with java, then pick up what suits me better later on... but first, C. As I will try to hit university, C is a must there for begin with.

Language is not that important, but you should still avoid C# as microsoft is going to go bankrupt soon for sure.

Language is not important at all. What's important is to learn the key computer science concepts and fundamentals that can be shared and applied to any language.

At my university they started you off with Java (they have since moved to python). Afterwards you were introduced to C, C++, x86 Assembly, and Scheme, but they were not heavily focused on for large projects and were used only for a select few classes.
There wasn't any real focus on learning the languages but on the data structures, paradigms, and all other fun computer science stuff.

C# is an absolutely solid language to start with. It's the first language I got in depth into before I began university. It has a decent market share when it comes to jobs. It can be used in a wide variety of applications and is similar enough to Java that you could make the swap with little ease. If you are looking at it from a hobbyist view point like wanting to try your hand at making video games, its pretty great at that too. As Potjeh C# is usable with Unity3d if you want to go that route and use a pre-existing game engine to make a few games, or you can give XNA a try. Though depreciated and no longer supported by Microsoft it is a great framework for quick and easy game design.

[loftar]

What's important is to learn the key computer science concepts and fundamentals that can be shared and applied to any language.

Of course, but there may be a difference in how well suited different languages are for that task. ;)

I'm sure Java and C# work perfectly for the task, but I'd say they're far from ideal, in that they put far too heavy emphasis on OO concepts, which is just not the first thing you need to learn about programming, and so I'd say a procedural language is more suitable. My personal recommendation would go to either C or Python. Python if you want the simplest possible introduction you could possibly get (but one whose shell of abstraction might require some effort to break out of later), and C if you want to dive off the deep end and get a better grasp of how things actually work right off the bat.

[MagicManICT]

Microsoft will have the same fate.

I heard this from haters 25 years ago. We'll be hearing the same bullshit in 25 more. I hate Facebook, and wish Zuckerberg would figuratively choke to death on his own bullshit, but I don't see Facebook disappearing any time soon, either. Name a large corporation, they have haters. I know people that hated on Linux for years because it was too derivative of the core Unix flavors and unstable. One of them was a professor of mine that didn't really believe open source could be successful in the long term.

[Astarisk]

What's important is to learn the key computer science concepts and fundamentals that can be shared and applied to any language.

Of course, but there may be a difference in how well suited different languages are for that task.

I'm sure Java and C# work perfectly for the task, but I'd say they're far from ideal, in that they put far too heavy emphasis on OO concepts, which is just not the first thing you need to learn about programming, and so I'd say a procedural language is more suitable. My personal recommendation would go to either C or Python. Python if you want the simplest possible introduction you could possibly get (but one whose shell of abstraction might require some effort to break out of later), and C if you want to dive off the deep end and get a better grasp of how things actually work right off the bat.

Heavily emphasizing OO concepts isn't a bad idea, especially if you are looking to make a career out of it as the industry seems to move towards OO languages. I do however agree with what you say on the matter if you want a good rounded introduction into computer science. I also would throw my support behind learning Python first as it is one of the simplest introductions to languages and has its usefulness in other matters as well.