Question

I wanted to learn to program for real and its way too hard :(
The only thing I am really good at are batch files, I learned batch files a long time ago but they are useless now so I tried real programming and its just too hard. Is there some kind of secret or am I just stupid? I'm really kicking myself about this one because it seems like I am just stupid and inept. :(

Answer 1

I really wanted to learn C/C++ because they seem to be the most universally useful.
All I can really do is create batch files (why is real programming so much harder than batch?)

Answer 2

I know batch isn't real programming, its scripting. How do I graduate from scripting other people's programs to creating my own?

Answer 3

someone help me -_- im absolutely desperate

Answer 4

www.codecademy.com try this

Answer 5

there's no C tutorial but who cares, it teaches how to program if you learn basics you can go on with most langauges

Answer 6

i already tried this stuff i just dont understand it. you have to do all these things to get it to work like subs and stuff and its too much for me to understand.
i found batch to be easy because there are no prerequisites for commands you just type commands and they work. why does programming not work like that?

Answer 7

which lessons you tried from there?

Answer 8

i dont understand subs and imports and all that 'extra' stuff you have to do to get a workable program. i dont get why a hello world program cant just be two lines like:
@echo off
echo Hello world!

versus this
#include<stdio.h>

main()
{
printf("Hello World");
}

why is it so much more complicated? i dont even get the basics

Answer 9

because its C :D and you havent tried codecademy, there was no imports and python is similar, to pritn hello world you just type:

print "hello world"

easy peasy?
in codecademy you can learn python

Answer 10

i havent tried that specific site

Answer 11

then go and try! python course its very simple

Answer 12

none of it seems simple at all thats whats confusing

Answer 13

you told me you havent tried and yet you say its confusing...

Answer 14

i tried other sites and all i wanted to do was tear my hair out :(

Answer 15

then try this, right now!

Answer 16

i even got help from the programmer at my dads work and he said i was hopeless
i will try it

Answer 17

good programmer is not equal to good teacher

Answer 18

well idk then it seems like i have tried so hard with so little gain. i tried other website that were similar. i will give this one a chance
i was going to say this:
i tried to learn perl and python once, c many times, batch was just easy to begin with but its useless now ToT

Answer 19

and the reason i learned batch was to make my pc9801 easier to use

Answer 20

u understand loops in batch? or conditional statements?

Answer 21

all i know is echo, if, call, start, exit, pause, >NUL, ANSI (a little), goto (labels), variables, %* %1 %2 etc, choice (now a nonstandard command), set (/p), and a few other things

Answer 22

i even made text games in batch but it hardly works anymore because DOS is dead

Answer 23

i also made programs with full text based user interface (such as menus)

Answer 24

the only thing i find really hard is the FOR command

Answer 25

FOR is very important, so called loop you will need it basically in every language

Answer 26

-_- well i sort of get it. i always do it by typing out every command (i know im an idiot)

Answer 27

You know ... I think Tomas.A brought up some very good points (about a programmer not necessarily being a good teacher) and sending you to codeacademy. (Thanks Tomas.A ... I'd love to learn Python)

I got interested in programming when one of my teachers told me that she taught herself how to program by using books geared towards kids from the library. I'm an okay programmer now, but I want to be really, really good. And that takes time.

And don't be so hard on yourself. That "batch" stuff you typed out is Greek to me. :)

Answer 28

@Laine well i just don't understand why the other programming languages require so much more complexity. explain to me why C for example needs all the imports and curly brackets to make a simple (or not) hello world program. i dont even understand a hello world program :(

Answer 29

I'm guessing you haven't started out with a really basic book. The sam's teach yourself books will have you throwing out "hello world" all over the place in the first hour.

I don't understand the complexity either ... I guess that's why they wrote the programs and I'm trying to learn how to use them.

For a long time I just "did" without understanding "why" ... some things I now understand why and others I do just because I know I have to.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Programming should be fun ... You know how to do the batch stuff ... you can certainly learn programming. It'll just take some tenacity. :)

Answer 30

then help me understand this stuff because you obviously have the talent to understand

Answer 31

Ha! :)

I'll be happy to help if I can .... but to give you fair warning I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as other are around here. I'm sure of that.

Answer 32

oh i also know how to do mmf2 (also having to do complex workarounds to get around the limitations)
am i just too used to how simple batch is (and even simpler mmf2)

Answer 33

You are so out of my league at this point! :D

Answer 34

no you are out of my league because mmf2 is a crappy game creator (means nothing in this age of 3d games) and batch is an old obsolete scripting language that only works on windows

Answer 35

i should learn linux but thats hard too. everything is just hard and whenever things get hard my brain locks up

Answer 36

maybe thats my problem -_-

Answer 37

Haven't you noticed that 8 bit games are back in vogue? :)

I've found when my brain locks up I need to step away from the computer. Your brain is still processing at that point. My best "aha" moments come to me when I'm sitting in traffic.

I think you probably need a dose of "I can do this" .... if you've done the other I know you can program. I really do believe that.

Answer 38

linux is very easy, try ubuntu

Answer 39

@Tomas.A ... any websites you'd recommend for that? Or books?

Answer 40

you dont need anything to know about ubuntu, its now very similar to windows, very user friendly and if you want to learn more (and of course you should) just google

Answer 41

OK I can only have one OS at a time on my computer, so how can I run ms office and games (touhou) on ubuntu. Thats my main complaint, I sort of know the linux shell because of messing around at my dads work on their old linux machine.

Answer 42

you can have dual boot and have both OS and there's office programs for linux as well and if you want games theres steam for linux as well!

Answer 43

my hdd is not big enough for dual boot and i need 100% ms office compatibility for school

Answer 44

I believe in linux i only know just enough to be dangerous (crashing the system) and not enough to be useful or fix problems that I cause.

Answer 45

you dont need lots of space for linux and you can even just USB boot and you dont really crash anything nowadays

Answer 46

but it would be smart to make backup before installing it :D

Answer 47

i can't usb boot because i don't think my laptop does that (no option in bios) the only thing i can boot linux off of is my 4.7GB DVD-RAM (dvd ram is like a flash drive but slow)

Answer 48

btw does steam for linux have garry's mod and portal 2?

Answer 49

not yet, how old is ur laptop? :D

Answer 50

from the end of last year

Answer 51

ok can steam run properly in wine?

Answer 52

my laptop is an hp dv6

Answer 53

yeah, but i havent tried it myself

Answer 54

hm, idk what distribution to use is ubuntu the best one to use or not? i guess i am not a complete beginner to linux (used ubuntu, puppy linux, fedora, debian, and suse) but idk which one i should use

Answer 55

i heard ubuntu removed support for some things that wine uses (most notably oss sound)

Answer 56

is that fixed now? i have a habit of using old outdated programs for things (like the pc speaker music player) and they didn't work properly in ubuntu

Answer 57

i dont know about that but ubuntu is easiest i guess and steam doesnt work everywhere but on ubuntu it does

Answer 58

hm well maybe i just have to go with it, theres no knowing until i try. i might message you later about programming or setting things up. bye for now and thanks for the help :D

Answer 59

make backup of important files jsut in case :D

Answer 60

btw what do i do about unity in ubuntu? i dont really like it

Answer 61

i have a 1TB backup disk i can use

Answer 62

i guess you can use different window manager but have to google how to change