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How do i become a good programmer?

tetris_mess

Member
@RefresherTowel I understand that some of you have concerns, but that is where my time stops to address the concerns people have. I can't address everyone's concerns and I'm willing to answer questions. I actually only follow two rules and I opened up what is specifying more of a context for my reasoning in another thread, while also going more into any exploration of how to approach programming more intelligent Game AI based on a generalization of human intelligence. I'm working on a program right now for instance, that contextualizes pride and ego, in a more intelligent game ai, responding to a player's actions more naturally, based on the behavior of the player, in an environment where the player's decisions would somehow effect what the enemy is doing, based on whether the player is sensitive/insensitve to the action of the game. Like, say for instance, there is a desire of one enemy, and I do one thing over the other, I would have two address both the enemies concerns somehow, for the player to advance in the game, by navigating a relationship I have with two different enemies. I correlate this with how all the x and y positions are changing, and what actions correspond to which actions the enemies will take.

In order to stay on topic, please understand that I'm sorry if this is too much information and you can't read it, but people are asking a lot of questions about where to begin as a programmer.

So if you have any questions, please ask them, and don't make a horrible statement that bites other people somehow. If anyone can't be emotional and support everyone's decisions, that does come back into play at a later point in their life someday. If you would also describe what being a good programmer is to you, I feel no need to limit my expressiveness. If there is anything that you think a programmer is not, I would love to here you address this, if what you think is somehow absurd.

It would be absurd to try to take a side-step and get side-tracked into some opinion you have about people who you think have some sort of vulnerable position being someone who has a voluntary or involuntary status that involves them with those who are seeking mental health care or those who need to be hospitalized in a behavioral unit.

I didn't mean to dump so much information, and I condensed it into what was speaking to the points of as many people as possible when considering where to begin programming, and how to really get somewhere as a programmer.

How much did you take the time to read my posts? I know Sabnock has been able to follow me. I'm very sorry if this is confusing and I would love to address this with you. I'm just trying to really nurture the progress of how results are lining up, and not how anything equates in the field of programming so that people can equate what is inside the box and outside the box thinking(a natural expression of what the bachelors in science and arts is and where people go outside of different subjects that aren't fundamental to science)

Think about how mathematics, computation, and logic, reason, and the humanities are inside the box, and people go from those subjects to others, to think more outside the box, and how people choose a career path.

No one should be placed on the spot to address mental health concerns, and our level of competence should not be at this level, where we don't ask each other questions and have a real conversation. Discounting other people, and side-stepping issues mean that you have your own issues and concerns, and you are off-topic, with your own mental outpourings. Let' s do more than trying to trash people's rep and throw their bio in the trash, guys.

The thing on the internet is that everyone has their own perceptions, and someone's point of view doesn't always match another outlook of how another person sees things, and in order to have an understanding, people need to take a logical approach, by saying what is on their minds, getting past any sort of abusive situation, and then going on to find more understanding in a conversation. I'm sorry you have these problems in your life, where you take less time to communicate, and more time to distance yourself from reality, and I will do everything I can to help everyone in the forums.
 
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zendraw

Guest
another go at this topic since its still alive for some reason. dont ask how to be a good programmer, ask how this works and that works, and youll ask that when u get to work.
 

kraifpatrik

(edited)
GameMaker Dev.
The answer is actually quite simple. Programming is just another skill, and how do you become good at any skill ever? By studying and practice. That's about it. You said you gave it a few weeks and you see no progress... Well, how long did it take you to learn walking, speaking, reading, writing, doing maths etc? Yup, it wasn't just a week or two :) Just think of a small enough first project that you would love to make and start working on it. Learn to work with the official documentation docs2.yoyogames.com, where you can find GML's syntax and documentation for all its available functions, including examples of their use. I'm pretty sure you can also google a ton of valuable programming related resources. And of course, you can always ask for help with specific problems here on the forums. Good luck ;)

EDIT: There's also a common trait of good enough programmers - thinking that they are actually the best programmers in the world and that everyone else's code is complete utter sh*t. This also commonly results into talking down to other programmers. Don't worry, just give it a few thousand hours and once you start observing similar behavior in yourself, you can tell that you've achieved your goals :D
 
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tetris_mess

Member
@zendraw - Thanks so much for posting: This doesn't have to be a long and drawn out subject at all, and I'm happy more focused people with unclouded decisions are coming to the process of having this discussion, to foster the growth of new and rising stars at the core of all industry.

@kraifpatrik - thank you also
 

vdweller

Member
A professor of mine once said "If you want to learn programming games, make a Tetris game first." Interestingly enough, my very first game was a Tetris game back in 2001. I used Visual Basic 6 and DirectX, a rare combination back then. I guess trying to make a Tetris game first isn't a bad idea, because it is a small project, it has well defined and simple rules and it needs you to have some basic grasp on things like arrays, input, the game loop etc. Trying to make a "3D MMORPG!!!!!!" as your first game is largely like trying to jump from 30m. height and expecting to live. Sure, occasionally on the news you'll hear of the god-tier lucky 💩💩💩💩er who made it, but the general expected outcome is failure.
 

tetris_mess

Member
@vdweller I read you loud and clear on this. John Von Neumman came to discover the game of life, and that is where the Tetris pieces came from. That is a really cool allusion you made to his work.

well defined and simple rules base a more well-crafted approach to design in an area a person would intend to write clean code that lives by its own standard, independent of any subject, while conforming to the logic of the subject.

By it's very own nature, programming exists.
 
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Homunculus

Guest
EDIT: There's also a common trait of good enough programmers - thinking that they are actually the best programmers in the world and that everyone else's code is complete utter sh*t. This also commonly results into talking down to other programmers. Don't worry, just give it a few thousand hours and once you start observing similar behavior in yourself, you can tell that you've achieved your goals :D
Ahah this is awesome. And true, until you look at someone else's code who is actually better or more proficient in a particular area and realize how much you lack.

P.S: for some reason, reading through this topic feels like attending a Deepak Chopra conference.
 

tetris_mess

Member
@homonculus - I'm glad we could get this all back on topic and no one was side-tracked or too distracted with other things going on. Trolls and hacks on the internet...at least this time we all know they are learning. Your guys communication style is trying to take over. We all have different communication styles on the internet, and apply what you know to communication(the area a lot of people lack these days), knowing only enough about communication to assume that they have the best skills to communicate.

My concern in the industry is that agile software developers, black hats, and squads of people they have influenced, are here to be a distraction in this thread. All of us white hats and clean designers know you are out there, so come try and poke as many wholes as you can in a secure line of communication that you know your safe from the government listening to.......explicatives
 
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Cpaz

Member
Aha i probably shouldve worded my thread a bit better what i meant was someone i know whos good a programmming told me that i cant be a good programmer because i shoulve started years ago. its put a bit of doubt into my mind because im a bit sensitive when somebody tells me i cant do something
Wow. I'm sorry to hear someone said this to you. Because that's the biggest load of bull I've ever heard.

You're never too old/young to learn anything. Anyone who says otherwise is an gatekeeping, elitist a-hole.

So, yeah. Don't listen to people like that. You wanna learn every single angle of game development? Heccin' go for it. Don't let people tell you what you should be interested in doing.
 
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tetris_mess

Member
I'm not trying to be offensive, it is just that kids don't have a hard time at all understanding anyone who is intuitive enough they have sharp ears and communication skills that don't convey some sense of responsibility they can lord over other people to transfer power to themselves in a vulnerable situation in an industry they are unwilling to grant control to others in regardless of having fewer skills. This next-generation has a lot of surprising up and comers, and it is probably time some of the outdated techs retire.
 

Rob

Member
I am really keen to learn to become a decent programmer. the thought of writing a bunch of letters numbers and symbols to create amazing things (mostly games) just excites me. however i cant seem to grasp the concept of programming and to be completely honest i do not understand anything about it. ive been trying to learn basic game maker programming for a few weeks now and i have barely made any progress. i also fear im to old to learn to become a good programmer, but i really would love to get good. Can someone please help and give me suggestions?
The way I started - and probably how many people started - is to watch a tutorial and make small changes to it. There are also things like "100 programming challenges for beginners" that a friend is doing at the moment and from doing hardly any coding he's progressing fantastically within just a few weeks (being off work due to the 'Rona has given him a lot of free time).

If there are concepts that you don't understand or even things like not knowing how to use GameMaker itself, you can ask in the Discord channels or there may already be blogs/videos that you can read/watch.

You need to become familiar with how to use GameMaker, how its coding language (GML) works, and how to use the manual. You're not going to know every function, I don't know every function, but I know how to use the manual to see if there's a built-in one I can use for what I have in mind. I'm probably not even considered to be a good programmer but I can usually code what I need to and I'm able to -eventually- work out how to do something, haha.

When you have those three tricks learned (Familiarity with GameMaker, GML, and the Manual) I think that's when you make the transition from "I don't know what I'm doing" to "I feel like the world's my oyster!".

There are still plenty of things I can't do and I don't know if programming will ever become "easy", but your ability to deal with problems, ability to think about how you want to design a game so that all its systems work together, and rate of progress should all improve the more time you spend on it.

You're going to make many mistakes, you're going to make lots of typing mistakes and spend an hour looking for logic errors, you're going to spend hours using and updating global variables when you could have used an array and for loop in 5 minutes, but if you keep at it and try to learn new/better ways then you will improve.

You have to be OK with taking the time to think about things too. Sometimes people will make a post in the programming forum and it's like they just transferred EXACTLY what was in their head on to the page. They didn't consider that nobody else is inside their head, and that "it doesn't work" could mean 1000 different things. If you take the time to think about what you're trying to do and what part of it doesn't work, that might lead you to the "why" and you might not even need to make that post in the first place.
 

tetris_mess

Member
I can't emphasize enough, how important it is to form good habits because this is the key to reaching the level of skill that Rob is describing.

Then a person doesn't sound like some pompous hack, that thinks they're all erudite like you have all got it on the scope from the masters, and you can just keep climbing because you have the will. These are the most insecure people around me who just wince at anything I do because they've actually made their lives that much hell.

It is so important to have control of yourself when being a programmer, and that means sorting out through all the events in your life that pertain to working, living, and playing. When you get into that routine, you don't form a clique with other idiots who think they are superior and in control of women. Sometimes a programmer has to let these people know that they are not their puppet.

These people look for all the literal expressions that are attached to a person, and the laymen's term for that is a string that is attached to something. It is pretty satanic and not seen as absurd. The worst scene I had to survive as a professional actually.

I've been programming since the 80s and I really know what's going on. I'm also a white hat and I know all the malicious coders, and I reform them after they sink into the ocean and get sucked into the blackhole of Utah.

For anyone who is interested in programming, you need to think about security. Not all code is secure or clean(and it has to be for it to be functional), and it needs to be hardened when being exposed to a network or it will hit a wall. Also, I'm really the only one any malicious coder likes enough to listen because I don't think they're terrible. I do not justify their actions, but I'm like, well here is some tech, you think you can break it? And then they are like, woah, because it's that hard of a level of security. I'm never telling people they are looking down their pipe like it is infinite.

EDIT: So this is important, and probably what Rob would also add about the 1000s of things that could be wrong when he is talking about reasoning. A person, for instance, is reasoning from their own choices, that there is a problem, but only one thing is wrong, because it is just a person, and all a person needs is their reasons to move forward. When we don't know someone, though, they could have 1000s of things wrong with them.

That goes back to what I keep saying about perceptions and the internet and remaining anonymous on the internet. People can say whatever they want, and get to what perceptions mean, but who knows who is sitting behind all of those computers, so use good practices, and write clean and secure code.

cite: godels ontological argument
 
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Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
A professor of mine once said "If you want to learn programming games, make a Tetris game first." Interestingly enough, my very first game was a Tetris game back in 2001. I used Visual Basic 6 and DirectX, a rare combination back then. I guess trying to make a Tetris game first isn't a bad idea, because it is a small project, it has well defined and simple rules and it needs you to have some basic grasp on things like arrays, input, the game loop etc. Trying to make a "3D MMORPG!!!!!!" as your first game is largely like trying to jump from 30m. height and expecting to live. Sure, occasionally on the news you'll hear of the god-tier lucky ****er who made it, but the general expected outcome is failure.
I've been doing this all wrong, then. The last game I finished is a tetris clone. (I started off making a platformer by cobbling together tutorial code, and the first game I made from scratch was a scrolling shooter). No wonder my entire life has been such a monumental failure.
 
Skipped a lot of the replies to this so if it's been said already well that's why ...


You can't run until you learn to crawl, or at least stand on your feet first.

Making a game involves so much more than just writing code. To get good at any aspect just takes mistakes and experience.

I suck at Art, I picked up the basics of coding and feel confident with that but my artwork sucks balls so in order to get better at making a game I've got to improve on my art which means spending more time making terrible pixel images and redoing them over and over. Learning from my mistakes and gaining experience with every moment spent

The same applies to all. So to be a good programmer, you just have to program over and over again.

Learn to crawl before you can run. And before you know it you'll be 'good' enough to make a game that you enjoy.
 

Pixel-Team

Master of Pixel-Fu
A Man I respect a lot once told me that everything is hard, and everything is easy. Everything is hard the first time you do it, and everything is easy the 100th time you do it. Programming is like a muscle. You need to flex it on a regular basis to become strong. Stop doing it for an extended period, and you'll have to get back in the gym and work out some more to rebuild the strength you once had. If you are passionate about something, and programming is a means to get you there, then I can tell you that you will get there in time. You can do it. I wish you all the best!
 

tetris_mess

Member
Pat Ferguson - A Man I respect a lot once told me that everything is hard, and everything is easy. Everything is hard the first time you do it, and everything is easy the 100th time you do it. Programming is like a muscle. You need to flex it on a regular basis to become strong. Stop doing it for an extended period, and you'll have to get back in the gym and work out some more to rebuild the strength you once had. If you are passionate about something, and programming is a means to get you there, then I can tell you that you will get there in time. You can do it. I wish you all the best!
That's great advice because anyone can run into a lot of frustration and very complex issues they can't handle on their own, and there are times when they are the only ones who can reason for themselves, and that is the action they need to take when someone can't equate things for them. The mind can just run wild and people will use their ego's as a defense. I'm just like omg the ego is about to dump all its excuses, and there could be 1 million things that are about to go wrong. I just let people think for themselves though and work through their own trains of thought(i.e. thought patterns). Game Theory is really cool, never studied it, never wanted to, and it sounds like something for hacks if you asked me, especially when they start trying to drive the narrative of social contracts by barring anyone they can when they would then view someone within the realm of social choice(so much and so often and so quickly), that it no longer makes sense as a theory. what do
 
I'm still very very amateur but I have learned a few things. You're gonna start by copying. Look up the tutorial videos, do the exercises, listen to the YTer talk about why this code does what it does. You won't get it at first, but it seems to work. Through practice you'll start to internalize some things, you'll start to see how code interacts.

A computer's basically a series of registers, that can store numbers. Every bit of code is either looking up a number, modifying a number, moving a number, or creating a new number to store in another register and remembering where you put that number so you can go back to it later- something involving a number, basically. I find it helps a little to keep that in mind, like the written language of the code is for our benefit but it's all tied together that way under the surface.
 

Roldy

Member
Attention to detail is essential. For example, the detail that the thread is two years old warrants attention.
But its for the 'search engines.' ;)

I think it got bumped because I made a status post about it. So its technically my fault. But its really @O.Stogden's fault because he made a status post about the forum reaction counter. So then I looked at my reaction counts and went back and looked at the post I had made that people gave a 'Angry' :mad: about, and noticed this thread had made some people angry. Then I read it. o_O The whole thing. o_O
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
But its for the 'search engines.' ;)

I think it got bumped because I made a status post about it. So its technically my fault. But its really @O.Stogden's fault because he made a status post about the forum reaction counter. So then I looked at my reaction counts and went back and looked at the post I had made that people gave a 'Angry' :mad: about, and noticed this thread had made some people angry. Then I read it. o_O The whole thing. o_O
You cant fool me
the forum said you mentioned me
👀
 
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