Hey,
I've been recently looking to do something in my free time, and I'm really interested in getting into desiging/coding/programming. But, I'm just stuck on deciding what I want to do. I know the whole "do what you want to do" but I'm just curious in some of your opinions.
Keep in mind I'm open to any suggestions and that whatever I do choose, I plan on picking up books and such to keep learning it. I'm not planning on learning whatever it is over night.
Well, this is what I have so far.
I'm a WoW player and that got me interested in making addons. I picked up the WoW-Programming(Lua) book and all and it looks easy/interesting. But the thing is, I really don't want to pay 15 bucks a month just to make addons. I don't play the game anymore, the only reason I'd keep paying for it is to make addons.
Another thing I've been interested in is designing websites and slicing/coding them. I'm not the most creative, the whole slicing/coding thing is what I'm really after but I wouldn't mind designing websites. The only downside I see to this is learning to make the sites and then doing nothing with them. As with the wow addons, I could upload them for people to use and even use them myself if I really wanted to. I can just see myself learning how to make sites and just having a stockpile of them with nothing to do with them.
And a third thing I've been looking into is 3D modeling, specifically GTA4.. I've always been interested in making cars for that game, but eh, I can't see myself learning how to 3d model just from sites and such.
Other options include Lua for GTA4 coding, something to do with Steam(Garry's mod/stand-alone mods). I'd rather to stick to doing something with what I have, game wise I have GTA4/WoW/Steam and programs I have Dreamweaver/Photoshop and I might be able to get a 3d modeling program if I do happen to decide to go that way.
So if there is any others I missed, please share. I'm very sorry that this is a long post, but any replies will be much appreciated. Thank you very much for your time.
Full Version: Looking for something to do in my spare time.
Well, for one thing I would recommend you don't start so big. Don't try doing brain surgery without knowing how to take someone's pulse.
Start out with some basic programming skills. If you are interested in web development, the obvious start would be mastering (X)HTML; and I don't mean 'oh I can make a webpage', I mean understand every tag, trick, browser dependencies, standards, etc. Then tack on CSS since the two go together basically. Tack on a bit of JavaScript if you feel so inclined at this point. These are technically scripting languages, but they will get you in the loop on how to tell a computer to do what you want in a very visual way without understanding a huge amount of deep stuff.
Next you can start into some basic programming theory, such as how to organize and plan code, implementation, the different methods such as OOP vs. procedural. For this I would recommend learning as you start with your first true programming language. I started mine as PHP (still technically a scripting language, but it works alot like C++), which has great documentation and is easy to pickup for most people. Also it will tie into your interest for web development. You could also try Java, but I believe that is a bit harder to grasp as a beginner from what I've heard. You could also try C++, C#, or Visual Basic. I personally went for C++, as it is super similar to PHP (the PHP engine was written in C++ and was inspired by it largely).
Start out with small, useless things to get you associated with the language, then you can experiment and make something interesting kind of, maybe still not useful, but its always great learning. A great way to learn once you are confident enough, is to download a source package for some software and try to follow along with it. You can get alot of experience following someone else's code, and get some great ideas from how they implemented something. If you were to try C or C++, I would highly recommend getting a copy of the DOOM source code, its old, but extremely genius how they made so much work on a very basic and underpowered computer over 16 years ago. I've studied it myself for about 2 years, and still learn some new things from it as I trace through it. Also DOOM is very well documented on community sites online.
That's about all I can tell you really. I've been programming web stuff and some basic desktop stuff for about 4-5 years. It can be monetarily profitable, but if anything, it really changes how you see the world. When I play a video game, I don't focus on the game so much as I notice alot of stuff only a programmer would, and try to figure out how they achieved such effects and how the code may look.
If anything, programming makes you smarter.
Start out with some basic programming skills. If you are interested in web development, the obvious start would be mastering (X)HTML; and I don't mean 'oh I can make a webpage', I mean understand every tag, trick, browser dependencies, standards, etc. Then tack on CSS since the two go together basically. Tack on a bit of JavaScript if you feel so inclined at this point. These are technically scripting languages, but they will get you in the loop on how to tell a computer to do what you want in a very visual way without understanding a huge amount of deep stuff.
Next you can start into some basic programming theory, such as how to organize and plan code, implementation, the different methods such as OOP vs. procedural. For this I would recommend learning as you start with your first true programming language. I started mine as PHP (still technically a scripting language, but it works alot like C++), which has great documentation and is easy to pickup for most people. Also it will tie into your interest for web development. You could also try Java, but I believe that is a bit harder to grasp as a beginner from what I've heard. You could also try C++, C#, or Visual Basic. I personally went for C++, as it is super similar to PHP (the PHP engine was written in C++ and was inspired by it largely).
Start out with small, useless things to get you associated with the language, then you can experiment and make something interesting kind of, maybe still not useful, but its always great learning. A great way to learn once you are confident enough, is to download a source package for some software and try to follow along with it. You can get alot of experience following someone else's code, and get some great ideas from how they implemented something. If you were to try C or C++, I would highly recommend getting a copy of the DOOM source code, its old, but extremely genius how they made so much work on a very basic and underpowered computer over 16 years ago. I've studied it myself for about 2 years, and still learn some new things from it as I trace through it. Also DOOM is very well documented on community sites online.
That's about all I can tell you really. I've been programming web stuff and some basic desktop stuff for about 4-5 years. It can be monetarily profitable, but if anything, it really changes how you see the world. When I play a video game, I don't focus on the game so much as I notice alot of stuff only a programmer would, and try to figure out how they achieved such effects and how the code may look.
If anything, programming makes you smarter.
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