Hollywood/Hollywood Designer - 1st programming language?

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amigadave
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:28 pm
Location: Northern California

Hollywood/Hollywood Designer - 1st programming language?

Post by amigadave »

In the opinions of experienced coders here, are Hollywood & Hollywood Designer good tools to try to learn how to program with? Or, does it make more sense to start with some form of Basic programming language, like Blitz Basic, True Basic, or AMOS Pro? I have purchased all of the following programming tools over the last 20 years, hoping that I would some day have the time and energy to learn to program on and for the Amiga.

Latest versions of Hollywood & Hollywood Designer (just upgraded Designer to 3.0 and also purchased the Windows version of Hollywood, in addition to the Amiga/MorphOS version I already had, because I wanted to be able to do some programming on my laptop when traveling)
AssemPro Amiga assembly language program
Visionary programming tool for text adventure games
CanDo programming tool
Amiga Vision programming tool
J-Forth for the Amiga
Amiga-E from a cover disk, with a small booklet
AMOS Pro with lots of extras on disk, CD-ROM and printed books & manuals
Blitz Basic 2.1 for Amiga, boxed with manual
True Basic for Amiga, boxed with manual
Modula 2 for Amiga, boxed with manual
Aztec C version 5 (I think that is the version number) for Amiga, boxed with manual
SAS-C version 6.93, or what ever the last version was, with full manuals
Storm-C version 4, or what ever the last commercial release version was, with manual on CD
Amiga ROM kernal manuals, all editions and every book written & released by Commodore
Amiga Developers CD versions 1.1 & 2.1, plus Geek Gadgets CD
Purchased Cubic IDE development system with gcc + other parts, for MorphOS2.x (and maybe compiling for other systems too)
A lot of Amiga books published by Abacus, numbers 1 through 17, except #15, plus a ton of other Amiga related books, mostly about programming, or doing video work with an Amiga

I took a couple of computer science college courses about 10 years ago, including a beginning programming class using MS Visual Basic, which I did well in, but then got too busy with work to pursue it further and I was not interested in programming on Windows systems and only want to program for Amiga and MorphOS systems. I have some scripting experience on a propietary Windows and DOS system for work from years ago and have done some reading, but I am just now getting down to becoming serious about learning to program so that I can actually start being productive and create something worth sharing with other people. I have the time now, but I am not sure about the energy, or concentration to keep me interested in learning how to become a good programmer. Any and all advice would be welcome and appreciated.
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Tuxedo
Posts: 338
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 12:41 pm

Re: Hollywood/Hollywood Designer - 1st programming language?

Post by Tuxedo »

For my personal experience I can absolutly state that Hollywood was PERFECT for beginners thea would start programming!
I buyed Hollywopod 4.0 in November 2009 and after only 6 weeks I've uploaded m,y first littel app (LoView) on OS4Depot...

Starting reading the guide of Hollywood from begining and ending with the nice and easy tutorial you have all you need to start programming!
Every time you need some new command simply look at the guide to read the synopsis and/or read the forum/mailing-list...
Nothing more easy and FAST imho!

I've started coding Hollywood(I'm also now a beginner I think however) with only really few basic/AmigaE knowledge so also for a complete newbe was possible to start I think...


That's all :)
Simone"Tuxedo"Monsignori, Perugia, ITALY.
Bugala
Posts: 1178
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 7:11 pm

Re: Hollywood/Hollywood Designer - 1st programming language?

Post by Bugala »

Hollywood + Designer in my opinion would be perfect language for 1st languge if it would have some similar beginners guide as Easy Amos has (which you seem to be missing in your 10 year collection).

However, with your bacground i believe Hollywood is suitable for 1st language despite the lack of that Easy Amos type comprehensive Beginners guide.


Main problem that you might encounter is in understanding the basic coding syntax (i think thats the english name, not sure) For most programming languages can eb categorised as eiteher BASIC type, or C Type language.

By name i guess that MS Visual Basic is BASIC type, while Hollywood is C type language.

BASIC is simpler, but except for beginning simplicity, C type beats BASIC clearly.


Nice thing with Hollywood + Designer combination is that you dont really need to learn to program to already get doing something with coding.

In Designer there is possibilty to add code to the presentation. Even with just 2 simple lines of code, you can aleady get started on coding and affect the presentation greatly, so it is very good ground to start testing some commands you find from manual.

With Beginners guide that would use Designer as learning ground, it would be unbeatable by any other language.
amigadave
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:28 pm
Location: Northern California

Re: Hollywood/Hollywood Designer - 1st programming language?

Post by amigadave »

Actually, I do have Easy AMOS and AMOS3D as well.

Just installed Designer 3.0 update today, but it could not recognize my original Designer 2.0 CD-ROM to complete the installation, so I am unable to run Designer 3.0 yet. I'll have to contact Andreas about the CD-ROM installation problem.
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