Getting started in programming

[amigadave]

Well, it is a new year. Have all of you made your New Year's resolutions?

Mine is to dedicate at least 10 hours a week to learning how to program and improve my existing scripting skills. I have purchased almost every programming language and tool available for the Amiga over the past several years, so I have everything I need to get started. I have all the latest versions of all the Hollywood products, but have to admit that I have not started using any of them yet.

My question for everyone here is this: Do you think it is an okay idea for me to try to learn how to use Hollywood, Hollywood Designer at the same time I am learning how to program with AmigaE & PortablE? I will be doing this for the most part on MorphOS, until my "First Contact" AmigaOne X1000 system arrives in a few weeks. Then I will be using both MorphOS3.0 on my 1.67GHz G4 PowerBook and AmigaOS4.1.5 on the X1000.

What do some of you experienced programmers think about my idea to learn "E" and Hollywood at the same time? Good idea, bad idea, does not matter? They are very different things.

On a semi-related note, I signed up for an automated programming tutorial that is Javascript based and it made me think about Hollywood and how easy it probably would be to do the same thing using Hollywood to create a beginning programming tutorial for Hollywood & Hollywood Designer. The site is located at http://codeyear.com/ and although it is very simple and basic in it's first two lessons that I have looked at, it will probably get more detailed as it progresses. I just thought that something like that would be great for beginning programmers who want to get started on the Amiga, or MorphOS using Hollywood. Since it appears to be an easy project, it might even be something that a beginning programmer could work on, with help from a mentor if they got stuck on any part of it.

Again, what do you think of this idea?

[djrikki]

Hi Amigadave,

Probably not the best of ideas. How about pick one spend a month on it first then pick the other and spend a month on it too? Once the two months are up reflect everything you have learnt and decide where you are going to go from there.

[Bugala]

It depends upon your experience and purpose.

My first question is, do you know any C-type language (ie. Hollywood, AmigaE, Java, Jaascript, C/C++, Python, Perl, Rebol...)

For mostly programming languages fall on either Basic type programming language (Amos, BlitzBasic, AmigaBasic...) or C-type programming language.

After you learn one C-type language (anyone of them) its not hard to jump from one C-type language to another.


If you dont know any C-type language in advance, I would suggest you try to learn only one C-type language first. And unfortunately I have to say that Hollywood currently doesnt have very good manuals for beginners. But if you have been getting fine along with Hollywoods manuals so far, then there shouldnt be any big problems waiting anymore. I think with Hollywood you either fail right at beginning (due to lack of easy beginners manuals), or not at all.

Learning several languages at same time depends on what you are after. I have a friend who is very good at programming, when he started programming for first time at about age of 15, he started with C, and he got so excited about programming in general that I remember he kept writing code to paper during classes and he tried all kind of weird programming languages available then that i havent heard afterwardfs anymore. He is excellent in C and can probably do with pretty much any language given time to educatge himself in them, but since he didnt have any clear aim at start of his programming except that he wanted to learn programming, it wasnt such a bad thing for him to keep trying out several languages at same time, although he did keep C as his priority anyway.

But if you have clear goal already, ie. to make certain kind of games/applications, then you should only try several languages at same time only to find out which one suits you and only the very basics, jsut to get a taste, not to waste time in actually learning them properly. For whats the point in using 3 years to learn 10 languages and then end up using only 1 to make games, when you could have used 1 year to learn that one language and already made games for 2 years.

[amigadave]

Thanks for the replies.

My thought was that AmigaE & PortablE would be the best choice for me, if I was working on something that needed a bit of speed in the performance of the code, but Hollywood & Hollywood Designer would be easier to do some simple programming with, where speed of program execution was not a problem, or consideration. I would not be trying to learn both at the same time exactly, as I would just switch back and forth, depending on what kind of programming examples, or projects I was working on. I may not understand Hollywood correctly yet, as I thought it was more of a scripting language built on Lua, which is also available on MorphOS, and I think the MorphOS Development Team has plans, or already has integrated Lua into MorphOS with the release of the last SDK, but I might be wrong as I have not studied it enough yet.

At Christmas I gave my Grandson an A500 w/SupraXP500 hard drive and if he shows any interest in learning about programming, I might set up AMOS Pro for both of us and learn that with him for quick and fun Amiga games that will teach me a few things in the process.

It really depends on what I learn about Hollywood & Hollywood Designer. I have purchased all of the Hollywood products and updates, but have not tried to do anything with them yet. AmigaE and PortablE seem to be the best for performance and ease of learning, but I might be wrong. I have studied C in the past, but did not do anything with it other than a fair amount of reading. I lost my favorite book on C, it was SAMS "How to Learn C in 21 Days" and was very easy to follow and read. I have a large library of programming books and tools though, so losing that book won't hurt me by much.

Thanks again for the replies. I think what I need the most is the secret on how to get started in sitting in front of a computer and typing the keystrokes for hours without falling asleep.

[Tuxedo]

@amigadave

Hi!
You are free to choose evything you like, but imho Hollywood was really faster and easyer to learn than AmigaE/PortablE...
I started programming with it only reding the section "II" of guide and starting programming...
I tryed also tio learn PortablE and AmigaE(throtught the AmigaE for beginners guide) but never succeded in nothing...maybe because I hate includes and similar but not so...

The only thing I can tell you for sure was that, imho, Hollywood lacks some speed in some areas but that depends on what you are trying to do...

[ArtBlink]

@Tuxedo: i think you have got Peg2, be careful, On AmigaOS, disabled composition mode on gui pref... You win a lot of time (on microAone my 640x480x16Bits parallax scroll in 24 FPS up to 35FPS) and hollywood prg run much faster... Don't forget AOS 4.1.4 (update 4), all command accelerate approximatevely of 10% (memory access and table)

French link of my test

http://jeannoel.roueste.free.fr/testHollynew.png

MicroAone with * is AOS without Composition mode (Pref/Gui => effects disabled)

Look the difference !!!