Where do I start

[Ralph]

The first computer I come close contact with was big as a pick up car, feed with cards a dozen ladies punching. It was stored in a room cold as a fridge.

It may be fun to do older thing, but if you start learning today, I think better to not get habits, like
numbering line, use GOTO, and learn to save bytes. Making longer expressions for modular division and put LET everywhere.

[superman]

but rather with a text-mode/console language where you can get efficient with things like if/else for/do/while statements, variables, opening and closing files and just get a general sense of programming

Totally agree dear Vic, once you have mastered the above functions the world is your oyster, once you learn to psuedo everything in english it is so easy to translate it into any programming language of course arrays will be your best friend too along with loops, example of psuedo coding

making a cup of coffee

write down what you will need

define ; coffee, sugar, cup, spoon, milk/cream, boiling water

first you will need to get your boiling water

IF kettle full then
switch it on
else if not kettle full
open tap until kettle full
endif

if cup ready
put in coffee
put in sugar
else
get cup
put in coffee
put in sugar
endif

if kettle boiled
add water to cup
else
wait longer
endif

the above would be better suited to a loop

Do
nothing
until kettle boiled

a loop will not allow the script to run further until the loop has been met, do nothing until the kettle has boiled then continue the execution of the script.

if cup full then
add cream/milk
endif

Now the above may seem like overkill as its all common sense, a programming language needs telling of every eventuality that could happen during any process, it can't think for itself so it needs telling everything possible at every stage, example what if you turned the tap on and no water came out?, what if you went to add sugar and the bowl was empty, get the picture?

Many bugs boil down to the small things you missed or forgot to tell the program what if, methodically going through all eventuallities is time consuming but is great when you find what you missed, there isn't a programmer on the planet that still misses little things in everything they code, I know I still make minor mistakes which make you wonder wtf, why is it doing that. Enjoy, you will be suprised by the feeling you get when it does exactly as you asked it to do.

[artattack]

I have to admit programming can be as much fun as working on systems for roulette, but I just wonder if it is worth the time, if it is only going to be used for roulette.


I started back in the 80s with the VIC 20, and these two books.


[attachimg=1]




Perhaps I am a bit of a geek, but I was obsessed, it has stood me in good stead though throughout my working life.


I know not all agree, but I do find Roulette Xtreme very useful for tweaking and testing, and not much of a learning curve.


ART.

[Bayes]

My two cents -

Nothing wrong with those BASICs which Vic listed, but for a newbie programmer, it's important that you have good documentation and that the language has a large user base, otherwise when you get stuck it can be frustrating. For that reason (and also because it's a good general-purpose programming language) I recommend Python.

It's easy to learn, there are loads of free tutorials (and many books written on the language), plus it's powerful with many libraries.

Also, there's a free course coming up on the 24th September at Coursera.

By the way, the name of the language has nothing to do with the snake; it was called Python because its creator was a big fan of Monty Python.

Monty Python, The Fish Slapping Dance

[VLS]

@Bayes

Oh! I thought you were going for RapidEuphoria!


What made you change your mind? Just curious

[Bayes]

Vic,

I abandoned Euphoria a few months ago. The older version had limitations which I was coming up against, and I didn't like the way the new version was being developed. So after looking around I discovered purebasic, which has a lot of great features and is very easy to program. I didn't recommend it because 1) it's not free, and 2) it's relatively unknown, consequently not much documentation and tutorials.

Us old hands can get away with learning new languages from reading examples in the manual, but for a newbie programmer, I think good documentation is vital. Programming has a steep learning curve when you're first starting out, and some people just can't do it.

I do know a little Python and think it's a great language, but I wanted a compiled language with built-in GUI support.

[VLS]

I checked PureBASIC before and liked their multi-platform concept, very much. The only downside -as you mentioned- was it being a non-free product.

I've used FreeBASIC for native GUI programs on windows, free and powerful; can't ask for more  

GUI's for FreeBASIC can be constructed with VISG:

link:://codege.org/projects/visg/

With both products you get GUI modeling + native binary support for free. Great combo!

compiled language with built-in GUI support

+1 to that