Programing? c language?

Question

hi,

I am a 13 year old boy. I spend a lt of my free time on computers figuring out stuff and using programs but then it occerd to me. why dont i make a program. i have been doing lots of research about java scribts and c++ and c language. so please could someone give me and e book or an online course writen on word to explain the language and how get to to know it. im am looking at spending arround 2 mounths learining.

I am not kinding. i know im 13 but i can do more than you think.

Answer 1

Hi there.

I'm 33 now, but I learnt to program when I was about your age. So, yay, good luck and I think you will enjoy it. There are some good answers already, but I will give you my opinion anyway.

I think starting with c is a good start. I strongly believe that if you can program in c you can program in anything! And, it is good to get the hang of "pointers" and "memory allocation", before languages like Java do it for you. Note: You can *still* have memory leaks in Java, though!

The reason why I recommend c is that it is the mother language! Most languages reuse it's syntax. Also, it is not "object oriented". You should master procedural programming before doing OO. For c you have the fantastic gcc compiler to have a go with. (It's free too).

Once done, I recommend Java. It is a wonderfully clean language with so much code already written that you can just reuse. See http://www.apache.org for loads of programs you can download and use in your programs! And it comes with a wonderful environment as well - Eclipse, http://www.eclipse.org. As recommended by someone else. I use this at home and work and it is fantastic.

As for online courses, unfortunately there is a lot of dross on the internet and it is difficult to find a decent tutorial in most things. There seem to be a few Eclipse/Java tutorials on the web that seem worth a look. Doing examples and demos are the best way to learn a language. Java is the leader in this respect as it's well documented.

Rather than randomly searching the web for stuff, I recommend that you go to the source - i.e. the people that provide the software in the first place. So that's http://www.sun.com for Java. http://gcc.gnu.org for gcc (which is the c and c++ compiler).

Your local library will probably have some books on c or Java too. Again, books are rather variable with some good and some bad. Just find something that you like

Good luck. Send us an email if you want to get in touch for advice (apg74 at yahoo dot com).

Answer 2

Hey, I'm 14, I have been programming for a while. it is great fun, trust me!

First, C/C++ don't go there yet. You will easily get confused and end up giving up with all the memory leaks/ bugs that develop.

Second, what kind of programming do you want to do? Web or software? For web, start off with HTML and CSS, then JavaScript and PHP. Here you may want to consider Java or Flash, you can make games in Flash and Java.

With software, I recommended Python, it is a good all rounder, and it is cross platform as well. You can create games with the pygame library, and it is easy for a beginner to learn, but it is also a good language.

Or, you could use Java, Java is similar to the syntax of C++, but the memory leak problems are taken care of, Java is also fully object oriented (you probably don't understand this now, but you will). Or, you can go with C#, very similar to Java (object oriented) but a newer language that uses the .net framework. You can create games easily with C# and the new XNA framework.

If none of these do it for you, I recommend the Phrogram language, it is very new, but it makes games incredibly easy, and it teaches you the basics of programming well. It is a good beginner's language.

Please, stay away from Visual Basic! It is a pretty rubbish learning language full of bad habits.

Please feel free to contact me with any problems or advice with programming : [e-mail]

Answer 3

Wow, that's impressive, kid.

I suggest this. First, you need some good books. O'reilly has the best (well, they're pretty easy to read), and they have a very cool online book system, called Safari. You can try it for free for a couple of weeks, go here:

http://safari.oreilly.com/

I suggest java, C, or Pascal for your first language. Prolly java, since you can get everything you need for free (well, again, this is true of the other languages too, but java is probably the easiest to set up). Anyway, go here to get java:

http://java.sun.com

and here to get Eclipse. You'll need eclipse to write your java code.

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

So. Read the first chapter or two of a java book at O'Rielly, get java and eclipse installed, and you're ready to write your first program.

Good luck.

Answer 4

Don't start with C or C++ , for the beginner it's like trying to read an explosion in a punctuation factory. Try using VB in Microsoft Office first and then once you have a grip on program structure then move on to the likes of VB standalone (VB.NET), javascript or better still Delphi. Two months is a bit of a steep learning curve if you are only talking using your about spare time.

Answer 5

maybe you could get hold of one of those C-sharp or Java in thirty days books. If you work through that quickly and are still hungry, you're destined to be a programmer. At that point, get a proper book like Barney Shoestrap (Stroustrup? something like that) - he invented C++. His book is too heavy for a first timer though.

The O'Reilly books are generally good.

C++, C, C Sharp, Java have lots in common, so there's no need to be choosy about which you learn first.

Answer 6

There are News Groups that help out a whole bunch.

You need some sort of compiler to compile C code into an executable.

I am sure there are plenty of websites out there that have c code to download and c help.
Here is just one of many. http://www.cprogramming.com/

When you do get the code and compile it, learn how to use a debugger. It help out a lot in aiding you to find problems in your code.

I would hold off learning C++ till you learn C. Then do Visual Basic or Java.

Answer 7

http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html#ctutorial

I think if you learn in the order that the links are provided to you, you will be ok.

I recommend after you learn C you should go to Java then C++ and onto C#. The latter 3 aren't too different from each other. I find that Java's syntax is more friendlier than C++ but that's just my opinion.