I've been getting interested in programming lately and would like to know a few things.

1. How does anyone get experience/learn programming? Costs?

2. What language/program is worth while to learn? I've used Game Maker before, but they throw you in without any real instruction for their language. And their updates ruin your program file.

It's perfectly doable to learn programming without spending money. There are plenty of free tools you can use and the internet contains tons of useful resources (although depending on your learning style, you may prefer a physical book).

If you're interested in games programming, specifically, I can recommend the TIGSource forums.

If I were you I'd chose some cross-platform framework or even an engine that satisfys your needs and picked one of the available languages: c#, boo and js for UnityEngine for ex.

I started with ActionScript 3 and still think that it has it's advantages (speaking of a 2d small projects). No need to learn about rendering, a lot of documentation, very quick develompent — you could try some of your game dev ideas and realize if they are worty enough.

For now, if I wasn't knew any langs I'd started with a http://haxe.org/ I think. Or C#.

Edited by ggrin - 11 April 2013 at 9:05am

I'm looking to do hobby indie games in the Castlevania side scrolling style. Like Symphony of the Night and its successors, it'd be a live action side scrolling rpg. Also. I'm aware of some languages being comparable or incompatible with different systems. I'd like to eventually port to different handhelds (iOS, android, windows op, etc).

Edited by Etheric_Shock - 14 April 2013 at 8:13am

The syntax of them ARE alike. In big lines, you got two "families" of programming syntax: C-style (with curly brackets, semicolons at the end of each line, etc) and BASIC-style (no curly brackets but IF END IF stuff, no semicolons, etc). Of course you also got some weird stuff that doesn't fall in either one of the two families (Prolog and the likes), but for ages now, these are the two "families". Java, Javascript, C and C++ all fall into the same one. It also makes picking up a new language alot easier once you get the hang of one. Alot of principle are the same, and the syntax is mostly the same, so you'll end up spending most of your time learning the particularities of that language, instead of learning basic concepts and syntax.

So, best thing is to first get familiar with the syntax and basic concepts. I find "user-friendly" languages without too many frills can help out big time with that. I myself (aside from dabbling in QBasic as an 8-year old) learned those basic concepts from a scripting language that only allowed 256 integers, 256 strings, 256 booleans, and that's it. Wanted to give them a name? You had to define it in a separate file. No loops, functions, nothing. Closest to that were GOTO statements. You'll learn the very basics quickly then, and from there on, you can go on getting the hang of loops and such. Or you can skip the stupidly limited language (cause in the end, that's what it is ) and go to a "user-friendly" language that has those already.

Stuff like AGS' scripting, Flixel (for Actionscript), and such might be the best. If you haven't done any programming at all and don't know the very core basics, I wouldn't jump in and start with Java, let alone with C/C++ (the pointers'll make your head explode :P )


Edited by Raf - 15 May 2013 at 6:28am