I got hit with a sudden urge to learn something and become creative again last week (it happens sometimes, it rarely lasts), and for whatever reason I’ve decided that I want to start some programming again. I’ve wanted to become a good programmer for a long time, despite the stereotyped images that go along with it – most of which I probably fit already – so I’m going to. My intermediate goal is to be able to create a simple, one-screen game of some kind.
The first task was deciding what to learn to program in. In the past I’ve had a quite a bit of experience with various forms of BASIC (QBasic, Amos, ZX Basic, Blitzbasic etc.), a bit of Pascal (I sitll use pascal of a kind as the built in language with the database I use at work), and I even did a few evening courses in C++. However, there’s a lot of choice nowadays, and it’s been surprisingly hard work whittling it down. I was wavering between the likes of C++, C, C#, Java, Ruby and a few others, but in the end I’ve gone for Python. After a lot of reading it seems to be a very powerful, very adaptable language, and it’s already proving to be very easy to get into. How long that Honeymoon period lasts is another matter of course. The IDLE interface and built in editor are quite good, but I’m loving Komodo at the moment for authoring stuff, I love the way it illustrates loops for me.
I’ve stumbled across the very excellent-looking Pygame libraries and modules, so I hope to be learning to use those once I’ve got to grips with the basics. Basic logic is fine, I can handle that with no problems, my hurdles are going to come in the form of maths and physics. I have no idea what kind of game I want to cut my teeth on, but a simple platformer seems my best bet at the moment. I’ve found some great collision detection tutorials and references, and I even spent an hour reading up on A* pathfinding (that’s an interesting read in its own right, even if you aren’t going to program a thing).
I expect I’ll pop the results of my work on here, the growing expectancy from you lot (yeah, right) will force me to keep my hand in and keep working on it. More as and when it comes, and only if I don’t deem it coma-inducingly dull.
(the post title is a reference to the first program you learn in just about any language, how to print “Hello World!”)