From: Trevor Squires <trevor@...>
Date: 2007-07-14T14:36:49+09:00
Subject: Re: I need serious help!

Joe,

take a look below for my comments, plus something I found that you  
might be interested in.

On 13-Jul-07, at 7:27 PM, Joe Wiltrout wrote:

> Your right. I don't see any good advice. Because people aren't  
> giving me
> advice. They are telling me to code Hello World for years and years.
> Problem is, how does that help? It doesn't. It doesn't code in a  
> weapon,
> it doesn't make a boat move, it doesn't do anything at all. It makes
> your computer re-print Hello World. I'v done the Hello World thing 60
>

Ever see "The Karate Kid"?  Get it out on DVD if you haven't (not any  
of the sequels, the original).  You'll think it sucks, but that's okay.

Once you've seen it, repeat this phrase:  wax on, wax off

Because that's why you're being told all this 'useless' stuff.  A  
programmer basically solves and endless stream of little puzzles and  
you need to know how to solve the easy puzzles before you have any  
hope of solving the harder ones.

It's totally understandable for you to be frustrated with this advice  
- you don't currently understand enough about programming to see the  
value in the advice you're being given.  One day you *will*  
understand and I assure you that you too, will dispense that very  
same advice to others.  Because it's actually good advice.

But right now I'm going to give you slightly different advice:

Don't learn to program games by starting with a general purpose  
programming language.  Start with a language and/or framework that is  
specifically geared up for teaching programming *through* writing games.

With that in mind, I searched around google for you and came up with  
this:

http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/ - Don't be put off by 'kids'  
in the title.  You want to write a game.  It looks like this language/ 
environment will start you on that path.

By the time you outgrow that language you'll understand enough about  
programming to hit the ground running when learning other (perhaps  
more 'powerful') programming languages.

But a word of warning - you're *always* going to be confused by new  
languages to some degree.  I've been doing this 20 years and just  
last week I was stumped by one of the first examples in a book about  
a new language I'm learning (erlang):

sum([H|T]) -> H + sum(T);
sum([]) -> 0.

"Oh my god!  Won't that blow the stack?" - well, I *think* it's okay  
because of something called 'tail-recursion' - but like you, I don't  
know what I don't know.

It's a wild ride, and totally worth it.

Good luck,
Trevor