Hi Bryan, You are absolutely right. I think far too many people think they can start learning programming on Monday and write something as complex as Shades of Doom on Friday. Programming takes a while to learn and even longer to master, and as a result there are a lot of steps involved in going from point A, knowing nothing, to point Z, being to write anything you put your mind to.
Before a person can write that big game they often have to write many practice programs that demonstrates programming concepts which are often boring as watching mud dry but are no less important. Therefore it requires time and patients with a desire to take things one step at a time and not rush it. Everyone begins with a typical "hello world" type program and builds upon that idea adding new concepts and techniques daily. However, more importantly than knowing the language basics is the experience that one gets from writing sample throw away projects. To give you an idea of what we are talking about I learned C++ from an accredited college. So I had a top quality education. After my 12 week course was over I knew C++, but when I sat down to write some games I didn't have the experience needed to pull what I knew together to actually write anything very complex. What I ended up doing for that first year or so was write simple games like Blackjack, Guess the Number, and a couple of funky text adventures which each were not noteworthy in of themselves but gave me valuable experience on how to develop software and what to do and not to do. None of that happened over night. So learning the language was only part of the process. The more important part was knowing what to do with it once I knew the basics and that only came from practice, practice, practice. Of course, there are ways to speed up the process. When I took C++, Java, etc from WSU those courses were only general education classes. They were there to teach a person language fundamentals and basics not how to create games or any other specific type of program. If I were teaching someone to program for the expressed purpose of writing games there are certain aspects of the language I can skip over and go right to the stuff he/she needs to know. Plus I can come up with examples that have a direct bearing on game programming rather than just generic examples that could apply to anything. Cheers! On 4/9/14, Bryan Peterson <[email protected]> wrote: > And patience as well. Don't expect to start programming games in the first > week. Depending on how fast you learn and how well you remember things it > could take quite some time. > > > > Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
