Wanting to Learn to Program

[RokChild]

I have been wanting to learn to program for some time now and find myself with more free time. What would be the best language to learn as beginner, any advise welcome.

[Dunny]

Do you have any experience at all?

If not, and bearing in mind that this is an Amiga board, I'd start with one of the BASIC languages. AMOS, Blitz particularly (not Amiga BASIC, it's bloody awful). You can have meaningful results in just a few hours, and there's wads of example code out there to pull apart and examine.

If you do have some experience then I'd suggest getting a C compiler (or Amiga E, which I found to be quite fun) and grab some online learning resources.

[Samurai_Crow]

Also, consider the type of programs you want to write. For example, AmosPro has a nice graphical programming environment but the compiled code is horrendously slow. AmigaE is faster but not as safe because it is nearly typeless. C is faster yet but uses cryptic syntax that has quite a steep learning curve. Assembly gives complete control and yields more optimal performance than the others but has the steepest learning curve of all while having minimal debugging facilities.

If speed is not the goal, a scripting language like Lua would be a great precursor to learn Hollywood, an excellent media kit that is designed to be able to support multiple operating systems including the next generation spin offs of the Amiga.

[RokChild]

I have little experience from about 15 years ago. So realistically I am a fresh starter. Not really sure where i want to go with it..... would love to work on A game as I have a few ideas. Thanks for the help so far.

[tolkien]

You should try blitz basic. Fast, simple, powerful.

[Dunny]

This. Blitz will serve you well, though the learning curve is slightly steeper than AMOS, but that's because it has a better compiler and a much better feature set.

As mentioned, other languages have their learning curves too and are much more difficult to understand. I completely agree with the comments about C FWIW, it took me a considerable amount of time to get comfortable with it.

Once you understand program flow, though, you'll find picking up another language much easier.

[Pyromania]

Any good resources online to learn Amiga E?

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Any good resources online to learn Amiga E?

http://cshandley.co.uk/JasonHulance/ is an old text for AmigaE.

[idrougge]

And it's a great tutorial! At least if you've learned some other language before.

As for the original question, I would recommend AMOS Pro. The manual is well-writen and pedagogical. Learning Blitz and programming at the same time may be a bit too much.

[redblade]

I know basic assembler and am learning C again for the 5th time. I'm using the book Abacus Amiga C for beginners.pdf you can find it on the bombjack amiga manual page.

I'm also using the Lattice C compiler version 5 or something from the 80s.

There is also a Amiga Shopper complete C which comes with the 4 disk dice compiler. the Dice compiler has limitations, I think you can replace the binaries with the full version which is available on Aminet.

But as a beginner I would recommend Blitz Basic 2, Install that and have a look at the example code, it looks very powerful also remember seeing some source to a ftp client on aminet years ago.

[Overflow]

Altho probably not recommended startingpoint, IF you for whatever reason want to start learning Assembly language, Photon's youtube course is really good.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Daedalus]

There are some good links and resources on http://amigacoding.com/index.php/Main_Page for a few different languages, but in particular I've put a lot of material in the Blitz section about getting started, covering the basic programming principles, and advancing from there up to useful GUI and graphics programming.

Once you have the techniques and principles down in any language however, it will make moving to another language much easier. I would also recommend starting with Blitz, as there's no need to use its more advanced features until your programming is advanced enough to use them. Once you gain some confidence you can start moving onto things like OS structures or different languages if they suit your needs.

Bottom line though - enjoy yourself! If you find something too awkward, just ask Plenty of people should be able to help, and if not, may be able to direct you to a different language that better suits what you're trying to do.

[zero]

Another vote for Blitz. For beginners it's easy to get going with but also pretty powerful - you can do inline assembler and hack about with the custom chips all you want.

In fact I wrote a lot of demo code in Blitz, because it takes care of a lot of the drudgery like freezing/restoring the OS and loading image data, but you can then write all the speed critical stuff in assembler. Blitz is fairly quick anyway.

In the longer term C is probably the way to go. Certainly for applications it is.

[Locutus]

Why not do the reverse and first learn something that's actually a bit more didactically friendly and helpful and once you understand concepts better try your hand at the Amiga?

If you want to start really simple and clean yet really hilariously awesome fun and immediate you could try PICO-8.

[zero]

For a complete beginner who likes retro stuff, you could try one of the 8 bit BASIC variants. BBC BASIC is pretty good and emulators are widely available.

[Bastich]

The route I took which made for a nice gradual progression (and a job in the games industry) was: Amos / Pro >>> Blitz Basic 2 >>> C / C++

Amos is simple and easy, Blitz added structures and a little of lower level hardware / system access, C/C++ gives you all the rope to hang your self you could ever need (int foo = pointer->structure.pointer->pointer[x].data) but also is by far the most expandable and adaptable language.

I did dabble with ZX Basic (fairly good), C64 basic (nasty), Amiga Basic (WTF!). Personally I would avoid the 8bit versions and go with Amos or Blitz (Actually a compiler not a basic). Blitz Basic 2 and a wire frame cube actually got me my first job (Elite).

Java is C/C++ with all the good bits removed

[Dunny]

There's a nice little ZX BASIC interpreter here: https://sites.google.com/site/pauldunn/

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[RokChild]

Thank you for all the advice, at least now I have a starting point