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kinsella93

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 12, 2005
47
0
St. John's, Newfoundland
Guys, i was wondering what would be a good language to learn code for beginners and how would i get access of the material needed to learn this code. Any help at all would be great, thanks.
 

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,742
153
That is a tough question to answer because when using the word "programming" a bit of a misnomer. The reason being is that there are many fields of programming such as do you want to program to design applications and if so, what kind of applications and for which environment? Do you want to do web design? And is so, how big is the site or how universal do you want to be?

I do however believe that you can start to learn C so you can work with the back-end of mac, and I'd add java to that as well.
Windows, i'd learn VB.

If you're talking strictly mac I'd go with C / C++ and then move onto using something like Code-Warrior. But I am no programmer so check around.
 

robbieduncan

Moderator emeritus
Jul 24, 2002
25,611
893
Harrogate
Don't use Code Warrior. It's a dead end. It does not and will not support Intel Macs. Use XCode. Start with C then you can learn Objective-C (for Cocoa) or Java easily.
 

robbieduncan

Moderator emeritus
Jul 24, 2002
25,611
893
Harrogate
kinsella93 said:
thanks, any good sites/appz that could help me out in learning or using C programing?

You can't "use" programming. Programming is a skill to learnt! The "app" for programming is the compiler. Install XCode and you have a compiler. This won't teach you anything but will enable you to compile code. Then get a really good book, or better take some classes.

Don't expect to be able to write anything to start with. There are a lot of basics to learn before you can do anything worthwhile.
 

Jordan72

macrumors member
Nov 23, 2005
88
0
Kinsella,

You don't have to learn C before Objective-C. In fact it's better that you learn Objective-C, because it's more intuitive of a language. You will only need to revert to older programming styles if your program designs need optimization that Objective-C can't give you. In other words, you are in safe hands just learning Objective-C. Plus, you will get to Cocoa sooner, which opens up alot of things to be excited to have access to: 2D and 3D Graphics, Voice Recognition, etc., that is code you don't have to write, but can use off the shelf for your own programs.

Get yourself a copy of Kochan's book. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672325861/002-5240261-8735216?v=glance&n=283155&st=*&v=glance

You'll have questions as you go through the book. Stay in touch with this site, I'll help you out. I just started six months ago and know all the stuggles. I was just there and am just in a little bit more of an advance struggle now.
 

NewbieNerd

macrumors 6502a
Sep 22, 2005
512
0
Chicago, IL
Definitely agree with Jordan72 about not learning C first. People use C to do relatively low level (aka complicated and hard) programming, such as writing operating systems. Even Obj-C can be bad at first because you will still see pointers (dealing with memory, don't worry), but Kochan's book.

My suggestion? Try Java or maybe even something called Ruby. Do a search for Ruby in Google and you'll find a main site with an only book and everything. The beauty of Ruby is that it is EXTREMELY simple, yet powerful. I'm definitely not saying you use only Ruby to learning how to program, only to get some intuition for what programming means and how to use the terminal just a little. Compare the difference:

A C/Obj-C first program:

#include <stdio.h>

int main( void )
{
printf("Hello, World!\n");
return 0;
}

A Ruby program:

puts "Hello, World."

Where puts stands for put string. That's it. At some point you will need to learn what #include and void and all that stuff means, but for now you just need to get a feel for things. That's my two cents.

I'm also a big fan of SAM's teach your self *blank* in 21 days books, whether *blank* is C,C++,Java, Ruby, whatever (not Obj-C unfortunately). Go to Barnes and Noble and just look at one of them. It's a good intro.
 
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