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So, I'm getting up there in age and I'm still trying to figure out what to study and get my bachelor's degree in and I was considering computer programming or even game design because I have strong skills in numbers, memorizing commands, seeing patterns affiliated with numbers and commands, understanding technical language, taught myself basic html eons ago and still remember enough basic commands (even thought I haven't use dthem for about 8 years) to at least put together a basic web page using a ms notepad file. I never really considered programming before because whenever people started talking about programming or coding I would get sleepy or most computer programmers I know are assholes. But aside from not being interested in conversing about it or being an asshole, what would be the best way to figure out if I'd be any good at it or would find it more fun to do than to talk about? And I know game design gets heavy into the areas of physics and math and though I totally was a candidate to take pre-calculus and ap calculus I chose not to because the teacher was a jerk, how would I best go about figuring out how well I could pick up on that.........I've done minimal work on making macros for my job but none of them are particularly complicated and none of them required scripting. But I just want to know if it's even a possibility. Where would I go first?

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Chewbekah ^_^

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, Attack of the Firday Monsters, Animal Crossing: A New Leaf, Lego City Undercover, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix

Recently Finished: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Favorite Game: Suikoden III

Well, I'm not a programmer by trade, but I did do Computer Science at Uni, I do bits and pieces as part of my job as a system administrator, and I do quite a bit in my spare time.

The way I got into it was by modding forum software in my spare time, initially using premade listings online, and later, learning from those and expanding out into my own work. I wanted to create something that integrated all these additional features neatly, without the feeling of them being glued onto the side that plagued a lot of forums out there at the time. That, ultimately was how I ended up attached to CoN, and later ended up learning PHP and building a lot of the site itself.

It sounds like you have a lot of the right skills to be a programmer and having worked with HTML is a good start, but bear in mind that it's a documentation/markup language rather than strictly programming. If you want to develop further into actual programming along that line, I'd suggest trying to pick up a bit of PHP and/or JavaScript - it's easier if you can think of something you want to accomplish with it, rather than just pottering around with no goal, but it doesn't have to change the world, just something you feel you'd like to create. There are loads of guides online for programming both of these, from starter guides to full reference manuals.

If you're more specifically interested in game design, tools like Game Maker might be a good place to start. They're really a world away from programming your own effort from scratch, but you can learn some of the logic you need to apply and perhaps tie that up with the knowledge you gain from other programming. Personally, I do quite a bit of assembly programming using disassemblies of the old Mega Drive Sonic games. That can be quite good fun, but you have to bear in mind that the assembly language used there has almost no direct relevance to modern programming languages and styles (and if anything leads to developing bad habits!), and the way games were built then is not even very relevant to modern programming - but I definitely have learned a lot from doing it, particularly in getting a sense of how the whole thing hangs together and how one might approach creating a system like that.

As for taking it on in an academic context, I can't say I was entirely happy with my Computer Science course. One thing you have to keep in mind is that, depending on where you go, you may find the course is both taught and studied primarily by people who aren't all that socially outgoing or especially adept at communication. This may be a false impression, and my experience may not match up with most, but that's certainly the situation I was in, and it made it difficult to learn (as a lot of the lecturers weren't that good at teaching) and make friends (as people mostly kept themselves to themselves - and I was no different). You may also find that there aren't a lot of girls studying with you, but that's not such a bad thing if you can make friends in halls of residence and such.

The other thing about Computer Science is that it's an academic course rather than a vocational one - for me, the first year was very useful stuff for the real world, but an increasing amount of the course material was of academic relevance only as the second and third years went on. That's not to say it isn't valuable - even if you do go out into a commercial organisation rather than continuing an academic career, the kind of thinking you need for that level of computer science is helpful in programming and problem solving even if the specific content isn't. But it can be frustrating, when there is more objectively useful stuff you can be learning.

I'm sure there are more practical courses out there though.

Programming can be a lot of fun if you have the right brain for it, and it's worth finding out if you enjoy it. If you don't, there's not much sense in pursuing education or a career in it. If you do, it's at least worth thinking about, but sometimes overly formalising it in education or work can sap the joy out of it. If you don't want to be a pure programmer, there are lots of jobs where a little programming knowledge can go a long way - such as writing Excel macros and Access databases in, say, a reporting role, or doing what I do as a system administrator and writing code to automate monitoring and maintenance tasks, or really a billion other things.

No idea if any of that helps, but hey, you never know! Best of luck whatever you choose to do.

This post has been edited by Tiddles on 21st April 2011 18:33

Since you seem to like game design, I'd say, pick either actionscript or javascript to start with (I like javascript better myself, but actionscript is more powerful- use the flex framework for gaming- I hear the flixel framework is a lot of fun to).

Once you've decided on a language, pick a kind of game you'd like to make (keep it simple- think NES or Atari), and google a tutorial for it (you'll be making browser-based games with these languages- flash games with AS and "html" games with js). There's tons of tutorials out there that don't assume any prior experience, and jumping in head first is the best way to learn programming. The cool thing is that you can learn a lot of programming fundamentals from these languages, as they are both object oriented (actionscript more so than javascript), and using a framework such as Flex or Flixel will introduce you to good ways of organizing your code and good habits.

Personally, I started by making a forum-based rpg with php, then went on to make flash games, and now I'm a java programmer by trade and volunteer webmaster.

This post has been edited by finalalias on 22nd April 2011 02:05

Cool guys! Thanks for the help. I think this will get me going in the right direction! =D

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Chewbekah ^_^

Currently Playing: Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, Attack of the Firday Monsters, Animal Crossing: A New Leaf, Lego City Undercover, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix

Recently Finished: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Favorite Game: Suikoden III

my mom's friend was a programmer a while ago during the big humongous computer days. now he's on the business end of the industry. My only warning to you is that if you do go into programming that you either keep up with the rapid increase in technology or be ready to be on the business end of the deal,

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Wait he says...do I look like a waiter?! -Kefka :)