Programmers' Corner

[F34R]

[QUOTE="Abdou23, post: 6306859]I really can't make up my mind,But from what i read i understand that C is preferable to learn before Objective C ( i'm talking basics of course ) same goes to Java. If there is a way to create native apps for both Android & ios using only one language that would've been awesome ( not c# thou , )

But another important question now is how long it will take me to be able to make a professional App ?! say i can learn a certain language in a week or two according to the online courses.[/QUOTE]

If you're just getting into this, unless you either have prior experience, or you're just brilliant, you're not learning this stuff in a week or two.

In a week or two, you should be able to make something basic.

Gimme a starting point for what you'd consider "professional". Compare what you want to accomplish in two weeks to something already out there.

 

[Christopher]

[QUOTE="Abdou23, post: 6306859]I really can't make up my mind,But from what i read i understand that C is preferable to learn before Objective C ( i'm talking basics of course ) same goes to Java. If there is a way to create native apps for both Android & ios using only one language that would've been awesome ( not c# thou , )

But another important question now is how long it will take me to be able to make a professional App ?! say i can learn a certain language in a week or two according to the online courses.[/QUOTE]

Yeah.....if you are totally new to C syntax then you will definitely need to get up to speed there. So do you have any programming knowledge?

Why not C#? Basically MS version of Java.

edit: And learning the syntax of the language is the easy part, btw. Learning the libraries and how to use them takes a heck of a lot longer to master.

 

[Abdou23]

[QUOTE="F34R, post: 6306862]If you're just getting into this, unless you either have prior experience, or you're just brilliant, you're not learning this stuff in a week or two.

In a week or two, you should be able to make something basic.

Gimme a starting point for what you'd consider "professional". Compare what you want to accomplish in two weeks to something already out there.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE="Christopher, post: 6306893]Yeah.....if you are totally new to C syntax then you will definitely need to get up to speed there. So do you have any programming knowledge?

Why not C#? Basically MS version of Java.

edit: And learning the syntax of the language is the easy part, btw. Learning the libraries and how to use them takes a heck of a lot longer to master.[/QUOTE]

I wasn't talking about mastering the language, i was talking about understanding it and being able to make a full app. say for example a calculator or an alarm app with timer and stopwatch. All coursed i found are just few hours long 4-9. i already have some Java basics by the way, i understand what an objective oriented language is, memorising libraries and learning how to deal with them is definitely going to take sometime and those will be learned whenever i need them in my work, there is no other way.

And i only want to learn Objective C or Android because those are the languages that being used in app development.

 

[Christopher]

Then you really just need to choose iPhone or Android to development for and not worry about which language. That's what I would do anyway. Good luck.

 

[Abdou23]

I know there is more money in the IOS store, But Java & Android seems the best option for beginners in programming. I'm leaning toward Java.

 

[F34R]

[QUOTE="Abdou23, post: 6307315]I know there is more money in the IOS store, But Java & Android seems the best option for beginners in programming. I'm leaning toward Java.[/QUOTE]

I'd go with something like Stencyl, GameMaker, or GameSalad.

 

[FightingSmile64]

Hey guys, i was just wondering if its difficult to enroll in a course at University for either software programming or computer science. I am in Australia (so it may be different) and i am tossing up between those too but cant decide. Can you guys briefly outline what you do at UNI (or college) and do you need a lot of high level maths? I have done 2 unit Maths which is ADVANCED MATHS (the one below extension) will that suffice and is the course heavy going and difficult. Thanks

 

[Christopher]

[QUOTE="FightingSmile64, post: 6307387]Hey guys, i was just wondering if its difficult to enroll in a course at University for either software programming or computer science. I am in Australia (so it may be different) and i am tossing up between those too but cant decide. Can you guys briefly outline what you do at UNI (or college) and do you need a lot of high level maths? I have done 2 unit Maths which is ADVANCED MATHS (the one below extension) will that suffice and is the course heavy going and difficult. Thanks[/QUOTE]

I think all I needed to get into the Masters CS program at DePaul was calculus. Typical math programs are not usually very helpful in CS since it has its own special kind of math. I had to take a discrete math class and an algorithms course which had some calculations, but nothing really like anything else I had taken. Regardless of whether you are majoring in CS or SE, you'll have to same the same basic courses like operating systems, data structures, etc.

I majored in computer science, but looking back I probably should have focuses on software engineering. More in line with what I do now. I took CS because I enjoyed the basic nuts and bolts of how software worked with the hardware. So I learned a lot about how the CPUs did basic calculations using 1s and 0s, different processing alignments (big endian vs little endian), and stuff like that, but that is only useful if you are programming in such a way that you need to know it. With languages like Java and .Net, all that kind of stuff is done for you and you never have to worry about it.

My software engineering courses focuses a lot on object-oriented design and design patterns. Basically the idea is take a large complex problems and then organize it and simplify it as much as possible in code. You will find that the majority of companies that hire people are looking for this type of skill-set if you want to focus on software.

So are you leaning in one direction or another? Also, what UNI are going to attend?

 

[Abdou23]

eclipse is basically a forest of errors, i'm struggling with it's android plug-in. i basically literally spent 2 days trying trying fixing errors rather than righting code.
one error was " id cannot be resolved or is not a field " the R.java file itself had no errors and it is referencing the field correctly,( blue & italic) and doesn't give me any suggestions, tried every common fix possible and finally i deleted the line of code and wrote it again and it got fixed !!!

I was think to switch to Android Studio but i don't know if i will be able to deal with it, also most courses are in eclipse. what do you guys recommend ?!

 

[Christopher]

[QUOTE="Abdou23, post: 6313369]eclipse is basically a forest of errors, i'm struggling with it's android plug-in. i basically literally spent 2 days trying trying fixing errors rather than righting code.
one error was " id cannot be resolved or is not a field " the R.java file itself had no errors and it is referencing the field correctly,( blue & italic) and doesn't give me any suggestions, tried every common fix possible and finally i deleted the line of code and wrote it again and it got fixed !!!

I was think to switch to Android Studio but i don't know if i will be able to deal with it, also most courses are in eclipse. what do you guys recommend ?![/QUOTE]

I don't have any experience with android IDEs, but I use PHPStorm by Jetbrains and it is awesome. They have a free Android IDE. Might want to try it.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/android.html?gclid=CI3e0p60gL0CFQ1o7AodOTUAsg&

 

[WaxWeazle]

I've been learning and practicing PHP together with a friend of mine who's pretty good with PHP.

I've been working on 2 projects which are quite useful for me.
1 is a private project I can't talk about due to private stuff. Privacy. ftw.
Another project is a movie database I'm making for myself which is purely to put in all movies that I OWN so I can use it to check the information for all the movies I have and not have to search between thousands of other movies. May sound stupid, but a small idea in the back of our (my friend and my) head says that if this works out quite decently, we might throw it online as in a full website and make it an actual movie database site.
It started off as an idea of making a excel-sheet or an access database. I asked around what would be better and eventually started to 'build' a database with PHP and MySQL together with my friend. I'm learning how everything works on the go and I must say, even though it can be a pain in the ass at some points, it's still quite fun to do.

 

[Varsh]

I'm already in the process of doing this but with games and so far it's working pretty nicely. I'm not sure if you have done this before or yet but if you're wanting to make a database on what you own then you might want to look into something called "scraping". You can scrape all of the relevant data you want from IMDB and import it into your MySQL database ready for use.

 

[Raydan]

Hi, I'm still lightyears away from being a programmer, but my goal is to get started with web design. I'm working on a blog website, nothing big or fancy, nonetheless it is a project that has a lot of significance to me. As I wrote in the "What are you looking forward to this year" thread I am going through a time of big changes. After a year to forget, I decided to take a break and do something different, so I will be traveling Asia from May to September this year. I'm currently also applying for volunteering projects in the region, so if that works out I might even extend my stay abroad until next year.

As I mentioned I am in the process of creating a travel blog about my backpacking adventures. After trying several options, since most .com domains where already taken, I finally found and bought a domain name here and now I'm looking to get the site hosted. I am planning to create the blog using WP, but at the same time I will start learning HTML and CSS, in order to make some own modifications to the standardized WP templates. Do you know any books or videos that you would recommend to get started with WordPress and HTML/CSS? I can't spend a lot of money on expensive classes so I have to rely on teaching myself as much as possible. The concept of the website itself will be a mixture of a travel blog, an travel advice website and a video blog.

So let me know if form your experience you have any suggestions on webhosting, setting up a blog and getting started with web programming. I will post the link to my blog once it is up and running, if that's ok, but that might still take two or three weeks.

 

[Varsh]

Seeing as you're only making a blog, I would personally stick with the free solution of Google's Blogger. That way you don't need to get anything hosted, you don't need to worry about programming, scripting, or anything like that, you can just simply concentrate on getting the look of your blog right.

 

[Shingo]

"What are you looking forward to this year" thread[/URL] I am going through a time of big changes. After a year to forget, I decided to take a break and do something different, so I will be traveling Asia from May to September this year. I'm currently also applying for volunteering projects in the region, so if that works out I might even extend my stay abroad until next year.

As I mentioned I am in the process of creating a travel blog about my backpacking adventures. After trying several options, since most .com domains where already taken, I finally found and bought a domain name here and now I'm looking to get the site hosted. I am planning to create the blog using WP, but at the same time I will start learning HTML and CSS, in order to make some own modifications to the standardized WP templates. Do you know any books or videos that you would recommend to get started with WordPress and HTML/CSS? I can't spend a lot of money on expensive classes so I have to rely on teaching myself as much as possible. The concept of the website itself will be a mixture of a travel blog, an travel advice website and a video blog.

So let me know if form your experience you have any suggestions on webhosting, setting up a blog and getting started with web programming. I will post the link to my blog once it is up and running, if that's ok, but that might still take two or three weeks.

There was some program called websiteX5, I used it in my noob age, it was an awesome tool, so easy to use yet pretty powerful. check that out!
http://www.websitex5.com/en/index.html

I am sure this will cover most of your needs.

 

[Raydan]

@Varsh: Yes you are right, Google Blogger is great because it is so easy to get started, but I would not be learning anything new. Plus I prefer having an own domain instead of a .blogspot ending. Part of my plan is to also learn the basics of web design while traveling, that is one of the reasons why I want to create my own travel website

@Shingo: Thanks, never heard of websiteX5 but it looks promising

 

[Raydan]

@Varsh: Yes you are right, Google Blogger is great because it is so easy to get started, but I would not be learning anything new. Plus I prefer having an own domain instead of a .blogspot ending. Part of my plan is to also learn the basics of web design while traveling, that is one of the reasons why I want to create my own travel website

@Shingo: Thanks, never heard of websiteX5 but it looks promising

P.S. Sry about the double post, was having problems with my internet

 

[Christopher]

[QUOTE="Raydan, post: 6423528]@Varsh: Yes you are right, Google Blogger is great because it is so easy to get started, but I would not be learning anything new. Plus I prefer having an own domain instead of a .blogspot ending. Part of my plan is to also learn the basics of web design while traveling, that is one of the reasons why I want to create my own travel website

@Shingo: Thanks, never heard of websiteX5 but it looks promising[/QUOTE]

I watched an entire course on iPhone programming from Stanford University with iTunesU. Entirely free. Have to have an iTunes account, of course. Just did a search of "html and css" and a whole bunch of courses came up.

 

[WaxWeazle]

Saw the same thing Chris!

I downloaded it all, but never read/started with it... :snicker

I always thought programming is interested and all, especially if you can make something USEFUL (lol, there's a lot of crap out there too) but sadly enough it's not always that easy.. I tend to pick up stuff pretty quick, but this is one of those things that doesn't stick to me.. Shame though, would've loved doing something useful like this!

 

[Tactical]

Unreal Engine 4 is free now guys.

 

[mynd]

[QUOTE="Tactical, post: 6426984]Unreal Engine 4 is free now guys.[/QUOTE]

Free untill you make some money

 

[Tactical]

Oh you.

 

[mynd]

Still it aint a bad deal 5% of gross on $3000or above per quarter.

 

[Tactical]

Yeah, the deals great. Especially for what Unreal offers.

 

[Varsh]

I've been using the engine since v4.1 and this engine is sublime, I'm ecstatic that it's free now too.

And the best bit is that UT4 Pre-Alpha is part of the launcher finally!

 

[Tactical]

[QUOTE="Varsh, post: 6427046]I've been using the engine since v4.1 and this engine is sublime, I'm ecstatic that it's free now too.

And the best bit is that UT4 Pre-Alpha is part of the launcher finally![/QUOTE]

Yeah I noticed people talking about UT4 in other forums. I might actually start learning code and game design now that there's no excuse and I wanna play UT4 lol. I can imagine this is amazing to independent developers like yourself, is Black Sun being made on UE4?

 

[Varsh]

Yes it is. It's been on hold for a bit while I've been super busy as of late however I am starting to find some time in places where I've got nothing to do so I'll be plugging those holes back in with documenting more on the game.

 

[mynd]

[QUOTE="Varsh, post: 6427054]Yes it is. It's been on hold for a bit while I've been super busy as of late however I am starting to find some time in places where I've got nothing to do so I'll be plugging those holes back in with documenting more on the game.[/QUOTE]

God I know that feeling.
Its very easy to fall out of developing, I always found I basically had to lock my self always for a few hours each night.

 

[Varsh]

Yeah it's a pain. I've got this site, my site, my other site, my friend's business site, and now my sister-in-law and brother want a site! Then of course I have my job so I've had barely any time to even play 5 minutes of a game.

OMG writing all of that out just made me realise how much stuff I have going at the moment, that's not good. >_<

 

[Bobby]

I’m not a programmer myself, but I’ve got a question for you guys. I want to create a website for the bussiness I’m starting, just a simple one with all the basic information. I would like to learn some programming basics to build it myself, but I think it might be better to use something like a website builder (I’m considering the 1&1 website builder, for example, or a CMS like WordPress). At the moment, I just know some HTML and that’s all. How long do you guys think it would take me to build this site completely from scratch, without any website builder or CMS?