useless
I started with HTML, which is pretty irrelevant.
Then I started JavaScript, but didn't really understand it (I could do things, but I didn't really know why stuff happened). I programmed my calculator a lot with TI-BASIC, and eventually went to ASM (also not understanding why stuff happened). I then started scripting my bot on battle.net a lot (VBScript), which helped my understanding of programming ... Then I went back to JavaScript and understood it, then went back to ASM and understood it. Then I got Visual Studios 6 and .NET from school and started programming in VB6 and VB.NET (VB6 was far simpler and wasn't horrendously slow (because of .NET), so I chose it). Somewhere in there PHP was thrown in (I've never really done anything significant with it) ... Then I started (and still am) learning C.
Starting with VB isn't a bad thing if you have no idea what a programming is ... BASIC uses real words so it is easier to read and understand when starting out. Just don't get too used to it or go too far with it. Once you have a feel for programming, every language functions pretty much the same.
And now to address the OP more directly...
To get a better feel for programming (or a certain aspect of programming), just come up with little programs that do something that is somehow entertaining. Things I've made draw lines on the screen, draw words and text all over, make little sprites bounce around the screen, calculate tables of numbers or data, and the most complicated ones of these that I've made was a program that generated a random array of points in a sphere and let you zoom in and out and rotate around the center (except my math was off or something so rotating along more than one axis caused the whole thing to do weird things) ... Things I actually coded (and did in fact use to learn from) were all of the modding and mapping tools I've thrown around.
Just try to think of things that are useful, interesting, or entertaining to you (or other people) and try to make that.
Stuff I've made as examples include a program that converted
an image into a sound,
fractal generator (someone mentioned such a thing in the shoutbox, so I made me one), a program that converts
text files into
chiptune-like sounds (never finished that (no percussion and it just ends), and this is how I made
my ringtone xD), and recently I've been working on a
sprite-based lighting thingy (
dl).
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 8 2011, 5:55 am by FaRTy1billion.
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