How did you learn to program

BippyM · 18 May 2006, 20:45

So how did you learn?

Did you take books and study, copy example code etc?
Did you just disassemble and play with code to see what it did
Did you learn about the hardware first or learn to program first?

Tips, tips, tips

mr_a500 · 18 May 2006, 21:05

I learned to program in a Radio Shack store. They had a TRS-80 sitting there and I grabbed one of their BASIC books and started typing. Then I altered the programs to see what happens if you do this or that. I kept going back every few days and trying new things. This was before Radio Shack salespeople became assholes, so I was allowed to spend quite a few hours learning. By the time I got my first computer, I already knew most of the BASIC commands.

So it was really a combination of reading books to get the syntax and altering examples to see the effects. I find when learning any new language (like Java recently), this combination works best to start.

bird · 18 May 2006, 21:13

When i was 14 i got a book explaining the asm commands and the basic stuff like registers,stack etc. After that all i needed was a reference book for libcalls and the like. Learning by doing is the best way to do it imo. Think of a programm which has some use for your daily work and then start to make it. I learned tons more by doing this then sitting in university listening to theory.
Disassembling and peeking at others sourcecode helped me alot too, but i guess you already need a basic understanding whats going on to make use of that.

BippyM · 18 May 2006, 21:18

I find it difficult to learn programming (Tho I can program in blitz competently)..

ASM is another matter and it isn't because I can't remember ASM commands.. it is more seeing what happens and remembering libcalls etc... hmmm.. let's see what others say

mr_a500 · 18 May 2006, 21:19

What I think is really stupid is that there are lots of so-called programming books and on-line help that don't properly show command syntax and example. So many times all I needed to know was the damn syntax and all they showed was the command name and tell what it is for. (yeah, but show the f-king syntax or an example so I can actually use it!)

musashi5150 · 18 May 2006, 23:38

I have fiddled with BASIC since the days of the Speccy. But it was only after learning C/C++ at college that I started playing with 68K assembler. I taught myself 68K from a book I stole from my college library. To be honest it wasn't too difficult.

And then I learnt Java and OpenGL at university.

And now I am using C# and SQL while at work

IMHO learning C would probably be a good primer for learning assembly coding... I would recommend 'C by Example' from QUE publishing - that's how me and my brother learnt C.

Rick Dangerous · 19 May 2006, 09:12

I started in TI-Basic on the TI-99/4a.
One of the most important things of this machine was, that it had the slowest interpreter around. Together with the 12KB available memory for programs you were forced to enhance the code all the time.
Regarding the machine itself, it had the fastest CPU of all homecomputers for a couple of years.
One thing that was glueing me to the keyboard was to write a pacman / boulderdash game.
But I left it unfinished.
After a short experience with AmigaBasic there came Turbo Pascal and VisualBasic.

Galahad/FLT · 19 May 2006, 14:48

I'm a self taught ASM programmer, simply byusing a Action Replay MK1 cartridge and looking at code and the results in the data/accumulator registers I was able to figure out what their code was doing and I learnt from there. Picked up 'proper' coding skills to do with sound and fx and using custom chips by looking at other peoples source code (because as a cracker you generally don't need to know any of that).

Eventually I did work for Gremlin Interactive, Amiga Format and Team 17/Binary Emotions.

thor · 19 May 2006, 23:41

I started with Amiga Basic and AMOS, but haven't done that much with it. Then I started to learn C. My experience is that it's better to have a program that I really want to code. In my case it was a program for showing different C64 picture formats. Then I changed some routines to ASM, then the whole program. That was ten years ago, but only a short period. Shortly after that I went to university and use C++ almost exclusively, on private projects it's the only language. I haven't done anything on my Amiga for the last 8-9 years, but recently my interest was back, but I found my (little) 68k ASM coding capabilities left my brain. I'm currently trying to get something back by reading some books.

forumbase · 20 May 2006, 00:21

first I started with Amos back then I thought amos was verry powerful then jumped into blitz basic and finally I im learning C/C++ now.

My first ever program was called TmpPlus
http://www.aminet.net/package.php?pa.../wb/TMPlus.lha

I started learning by looking into source codes and changing values deleting some parts of the code re-compilling to see what would happen.

FromWithin · 20 May 2006, 02:59

Started on my C64, not being able to get my head around it at all. Then on my Amiga I didn't get very far, but I would have a mess with my Action Replay and played with bits of code I found. Was sort of forced into learning assembler properly (see this). Later got into Blitz Basic for a while. Went back to asm and wrote a Gameboy music driver. Then got a job doing C++. Documentation + experimentation is the key.

AGN · 20 May 2006, 13:36

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=227101

What is Your progress? If You have some problems with anything just ask and we wil help You!

BippyM · 20 May 2006, 16:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by AGN

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=227101

What is Your progress? If You have some problems with anything just ask and we wil help You!

Didn't get started yet.. I am planning to have a go later after a snooze

Though it'll be something basic.. I can't remember anything

snarkhunter · 20 May 2006, 20:36

I started with... listings in "Basic" from French computer magazines, circa 1980 - and no computer ! - , until I eventually noticed that I could actually understand what the purpose of these was !

In 1983, I did purchase my very first home computer, i.e. a "Dragon 32". I would use Basic for a while and, a couple of years later, the same thing happened with 6809E assembly listings from dedicated magazines. So I kept using both languages, and occasionally checked some other ones as they became available (such as Forth, Lisp, etc).

When I purchased my first amiga, back in 1988, I never, ever, thought of using Basic again, since the only one that was available at the time was so hopeless. Therefore, I decided to stick to machine code, but never got that far into the Amiga's OS because finding any proper documentation was a real pain at the time. I believe the most advanced things I ever wrote were written in 6809E, which was just great fun programming. And, as a self-taught coder, and a rather isolated one too, I obviously had some strengths and weaknesses ! Very often, I would just do things because no-one had told me these were not possible, hahaha !

Over the last 18 years or so, I've been using business languages for my job : either IBM's "mini computer" languages such as RPG, or a bit of Java, which I hardly understand, due to not actually being a programmer, and never having been trained either ! But this does not seem to bother my boss that much !

sh

BippyM · 20 May 2006, 20:44

It's quite ironic that since I was about 8yrs old I wanted to program properly.. due to circumstances beyond mien I couldn't afford the RKMs and hardware manuals not too mention a decent assembler etc... (I could get Devpac but no documentation)..

So I ended up learning Amos and then Blitz.. I have always wanted to learn Amiga ASM only problem is I find it difficult to remember things nowdays.. so it is a long hard slog!

mr_a500 · 21 May 2006, 00:33

Hey snarkhunter, your experience is almost identical to mine. We both learned programming before getting a computer, both got TRS-80 in 1983 (I think Dragon is euro version of Colour Computer 2), both did BASIC and a little 6809 assembler, both then got an Amiga (well, me in 1989 - and I assume yours was also an A500) and we were both disgusted by AmigaBasic and we both had a hard time finding Amiga assembler documentation. (..and I hunted snarks in Half-Life

)

Are you my French twin? That reminds me of a Simpsons quote where Millhouse meets his Shelbyville twin and (strangely) says "Now I know what it feels like when doves cry".

alkis21 · 21 May 2006, 01:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by musashi5150

I have fiddled with BASIC since the days of the Speccy.

Same here. Then I moved on to Amiga Basic and C on the Amiga, and C++ in the University.

Quote:

I taught myself 68K from a book I stole from my college library. To be honest it wasn't too difficult.

What wasn't too difficult, learning 68k or stealing the book?

snarkhunter · 21 May 2006, 09:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr_a500

Hey snarkhunter, your experience is almost identical to mine. We both learned programming before getting a computer, both got TRS-80 in 1983 (I think Dragon is euro version of Colour Computer 2), both did BASIC and a little 6809 assembler, both then got an Amiga (well, me in 1989 - and I assume yours was also an A500) and we were both disgusted by AmigaBasic and we both had a hard time finding Amiga assembler documentation. (..and I hunted snarks in Half-Life

)

Are you my French twin? That reminds me of a Simpsons quote where Millhouse meets his Shelbyville twin and (strangely) says "Now I know what it feels like when doves cry".

Hi ! Your post was Kind of strange to read, but fun too ! Let's just hope one of us is not in fact schizophrenic !!! Yes, you're right : "Dragon 32" was almost a clone of the "Co-Co", and definitely not a very legal one... the ROM structure was not the same (not the same addresses for many low-level routines), but shared he same Basic (used to retrieve listings from "The Rainbow") and a number of American games, written in machine code for the "Co-Co", would work on the Dragon as well.

One of the best books related to m/c I ever had was Lance Leventhal's. As a matter of fact, I still have it as of today, as well as all the other books I purchased !

Is your Co-Co still working ? But perhaps you don't have it any longer... I still have my Dragon, though I haven't tried to use it in ages since I converted all my disks to PC files a few years ago : I now use these within "MESS" or a dedicated emulator.

Anyway, most pleased to meet you !

Kind regards,
sh

P.S. and as to your chasing snarks, I do believe it will be just ok ; that is, as long as you don't come across a boojum !...

mr_a500 · 21 May 2006, 13:42

snarkhunter:

Yes, I used to get Rainbow magazine (for people who don't know - this was BEFORE the rainbow became a symbol for gays

). I lost my CoCo 2 years ago but I still have my CoCo 3. I have all the old games I wrote on dying cassette tape. It takes about 20 attempts to get a successful load (damn I/O errors!). I don't know how to transfer to my Amiga so I'll probably have to write it all down on paper then retype it (very tedious).

Do you use Dream (Amiga Dragon emulator)? The only game I could get working on that was "Madness and the Minotaur". (well, now I've really gone off topic

)

Heavyweight7t6 · 05 June 2006, 18:01

I bought a copy Blitz Basic off ebay some months ago (I think I still have the amiga format magazines with the tutorial for making a game somewhere in the attic). The brick wall I always seemed to hit is the question of what do I want to program??!?!.

I would love to have a go at programing small music demos with scrollers and the such - I did cheat back in 1992 and use the RSI demomaker (shameful

). Hopefully when my A1200 tower project gets underway I will crack on and have a go!. Any tutorials you guys know off and could send me would be great!. Thanks

18 May 2006, 20:45	#1
BippyM Global Moderator Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Derby, UK Age: 48 Posts: 9,355	How did you learn to program So how did you learn? Did you take books and study, copy example code etc? Did you just disassemble and play with code to see what it did Did you learn about the hardware first or learn to program first? Tips, tips, tips

18 May 2006, 21:13	#3
bird tRSi-iNNOVATiONs Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: germany Age: 47 Posts: 33	When i was 14 i got a book explaining the asm commands and the basic stuff like registers,stack etc. After that all i needed was a reference book for libcalls and the like. Learning by doing is the best way to do it imo. Think of a programm which has some use for your daily work and then start to make it. I learned tons more by doing this then sitting in university listening to theory. Disassembling and peeking at others sourcecode helped me alot too, but i guess you already need a basic understanding whats going on to make use of that. Last edited by bird; 18 May 2006 at 21:19.

20 May 2006, 20:36	#14
snarkhunter Registered User Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: France Age: 59 Posts: 74	I started with... listings in "Basic" from French computer magazines, circa 1980 - and no computer ! - , until I eventually noticed that I could actually understand what the purpose of these was ! In 1983, I did purchase my very first home computer, i.e. a "Dragon 32". I would use Basic for a while and, a couple of years later, the same thing happened with 6809E assembly listings from dedicated magazines. So I kept using both languages, and occasionally checked some other ones as they became available (such as Forth, Lisp, etc). When I purchased my first amiga, back in 1988, I never, ever, thought of using Basic again, since the only one that was available at the time was so hopeless. Therefore, I decided to stick to machine code, but never got that far into the Amiga's OS because finding any proper documentation was a real pain at the time. I believe the most advanced things I ever wrote were written in 6809E, which was just great fun programming. And, as a self-taught coder, and a rather isolated one too, I obviously had some strengths and weaknesses ! Very often, I would just do things because no-one had told me these were not possible, hahaha ! Over the last 18 years or so, I've been using business languages for my job : either IBM's "mini computer" languages such as RPG, or a bit of Java, which I hardly understand, due to not actually being a programmer, and never having been trained either ! But this does not seem to bother my boss that much ! sh Last edited by snarkhunter; 20 May 2006 at 21:54.

05 June 2006, 18:01	#20
Heavyweight7t6 Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Cardiff / Wales Age: 47 Posts: 161	I bought a copy Blitz Basic off ebay some months ago (I think I still have the amiga format magazines with the tutorial for making a game somewhere in the attic). The brick wall I always seemed to hit is the question of what do I want to program??!?!. I would love to have a go at programing small music demos with scrollers and the such - I did cheat back in 1992 and use the RSI demomaker (shameful). Hopefully when my A1200 tower project gets underway I will crack on and have a go!. Any tutorials you guys know off and could send me would be great!. Thanks

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18 May 2006, 21:05	#2
mr_a500 Amiga-based Cyborg Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 808	I learned to program in a Radio Shack store. They had a TRS-80 sitting there and I grabbed one of their BASIC books and started typing. Then I altered the programs to see what happens if you do this or that. I kept going back every few days and trying new things. This was before Radio Shack salespeople became assholes, so I was allowed to spend quite a few hours learning. By the time I got my first computer, I already knew most of the BASIC commands. So it was really a combination of reading books to get the syntax and altering examples to see the effects. I find when learning any new language (like Java recently), this combination works best to start.

18 May 2006, 21:18	#4
BippyM Global Moderator Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Derby, UK Age: 48 Posts: 9,355	I find it difficult to learn programming (Tho I can program in blitz competently).. ASM is another matter and it isn't because I can't remember ASM commands.. it is more seeing what happens and remembering libcalls etc... hmmm.. let's see what others say

18 May 2006, 21:19	#5
mr_a500 Amiga-based Cyborg Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 808	What I think is really stupid is that there are lots of so-called programming books and on-line help that don't properly show command syntax and example. So many times all I needed to know was the damn syntax and all they showed was the command name and tell what it is for. (yeah, but show the f-king syntax or an example so I can actually use it!)

18 May 2006, 23:38	#6
musashi5150 move.w #$4489,$dff07e Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Norfolk, UK Age: 42 Posts: 2,351	I have fiddled with BASIC since the days of the Speccy. But it was only after learning C/C++ at college that I started playing with 68K assembler. I taught myself 68K from a book I stole from my college library. To be honest it wasn't too difficult. And then I learnt Java and OpenGL at university. And now I am using C# and SQL while at work IMHO learning C would probably be a good primer for learning assembly coding... I would recommend 'C by Example' from QUE publishing - that's how me and my brother learnt C.

19 May 2006, 09:12	#7
Rick Dangerous Registered Playmate Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: OZ Age: 54 Posts: 156	I started in TI-Basic on the TI-99/4a. One of the most important things of this machine was, that it had the slowest interpreter around. Together with the 12KB available memory for programs you were forced to enhance the code all the time. Regarding the machine itself, it had the fastest CPU of all homecomputers for a couple of years. One thing that was glueing me to the keyboard was to write a pacman / boulderdash game. But I left it unfinished. After a short experience with AmigaBasic there came Turbo Pascal and VisualBasic.

19 May 2006, 14:48	#8
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,986	I'm a self taught ASM programmer, simply byusing a Action Replay MK1 cartridge and looking at code and the results in the data/accumulator registers I was able to figure out what their code was doing and I learnt from there. Picked up 'proper' coding skills to do with sound and fx and using custom chips by looking at other peoples source code (because as a cracker you generally don't need to know any of that). Eventually I did work for Gremlin Interactive, Amiga Format and Team 17/Binary Emotions.

19 May 2006, 23:41	#9
thor Registered User Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Posts: 899	I started with Amiga Basic and AMOS, but haven't done that much with it. Then I started to learn C. My experience is that it's better to have a program that I really want to code. In my case it was a program for showing different C64 picture formats. Then I changed some routines to ASM, then the whole program. That was ten years ago, but only a short period. Shortly after that I went to university and use C++ almost exclusively, on private projects it's the only language. I haven't done anything on my Amiga for the last 8-9 years, but recently my interest was back, but I found my (little) 68k ASM coding capabilities left my brain. I'm currently trying to get something back by reading some books.

20 May 2006, 00:21	#10
forumbase Zone Friend Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: London Age: 45 Posts: 39	first I started with Amos back then I thought amos was verry powerful then jumped into blitz basic and finally I im learning C/C++ now. My first ever program was called TmpPlus http://www.aminet.net/package.php?pa.../wb/TMPlus.lha I started learning by looking into source codes and changing values deleting some parts of the code re-compilling to see what would happen.

20 May 2006, 02:59	#11
FromWithin Music lord Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Liverpool, UK Age: 50 Posts: 630	Started on my C64, not being able to get my head around it at all. Then on my Amiga I didn't get very far, but I would have a mess with my Action Replay and played with bits of code I found. Was sort of forced into learning assembler properly (see this). Later got into Blitz Basic for a while. Went back to asm and wrote a Gameboy music driver. Then got a job doing C++. Documentation + experimentation is the key.

20 May 2006, 13:36	#12
AGN Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Poland Posts: 142	http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=227101 What is Your progress? If You have some problems with anything just ask and we wil help You!

20 May 2006, 20:44	#15
BippyM Global Moderator Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Derby, UK Age: 48 Posts: 9,355	It's quite ironic that since I was about 8yrs old I wanted to program properly.. due to circumstances beyond mien I couldn't afford the RKMs and hardware manuals not too mention a decent assembler etc... (I could get Devpac but no documentation).. So I ended up learning Amos and then Blitz.. I have always wanted to learn Amiga ASM only problem is I find it difficult to remember things nowdays.. so it is a long hard slog!

21 May 2006, 00:33	#16
mr_a500 Amiga-based Cyborg Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 808	Hey snarkhunter, your experience is almost identical to mine. We both learned programming before getting a computer, both got TRS-80 in 1983 (I think Dragon is euro version of Colour Computer 2), both did BASIC and a little 6809 assembler, both then got an Amiga (well, me in 1989 - and I assume yours was also an A500) and we were both disgusted by AmigaBasic and we both had a hard time finding Amiga assembler documentation. (..and I hunted snarks in Half-Life ) Are you my French twin? That reminds me of a Simpsons quote where Millhouse meets his Shelbyville twin and (strangely) says "Now I know what it feels like when doves cry".

21 May 2006, 13:42	#19
mr_a500 Amiga-based Cyborg Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 808	snarkhunter: Yes, I used to get Rainbow magazine (for people who don't know - this was BEFORE the rainbow became a symbol for gays ). I lost my CoCo 2 years ago but I still have my CoCo 3. I have all the old games I wrote on dying cassette tape. It takes about 20 attempts to get a successful load (damn I/O errors!). I don't know how to transfer to my Amiga so I'll probably have to write it all down on paper then retype it (very tedious). Do you use Dream (Amiga Dragon emulator)? The only game I could get working on that was "Madness and the Minotaur". (well, now I've really gone off topic )

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