# Easiest Way To Learn Programming



## af3 (Jun 18, 2008)

I think I will start with Visual Basic... What is the easiest way to learn? I intend to modify game engine code and create various enhancements to existing source code. Is there a set of videos on YouTube perhaps? I'd hate to do a search and be mislead by the initial search results... Any suggestions? :4-dontkno


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## darrensmith016 (Aug 5, 2008)

i have a very basic nolegde of programming i started with a book call "build a program now" it was a good read you get to makes web browsers etc

id say thats the best place to start


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## jamiemac2005 (Jul 5, 2007)

hmm, if you're set on VB then we need to know what version? VB6? VB.NET?

I'm not sure there are many online tutorials for VB (when i was learning VB.Net it was hard to find any), Your best bet is a good book...

If you'd concider other languages there are much better/easier ones to learn (Java/C/C++ are easier to develop and there are many online resources for them)...

As always google is your friend "vb tutorial" doesn't come up with as many hits as i'd expected...

As for the method of learning i'd steer you away from youtube video's etc, because you can usually barely see the code and it's usually a necessity (even if the video is well narrated) to be able to see the code that's being written.

Cheers,
Jamey


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## af3 (Jun 18, 2008)

I have been reading articles on http://www.cprogramming.com
I guess I would have to learn the language of the code I will be making modifications too.

I believe the Source engine's game binary is in C++ language. I would also like to port variations of the Quake II engine to Pocket PC/Windows Mobile 6 for the Intel XScale processor.


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## jamiemac2005 (Jul 5, 2007)

Ah, great, i always suggest cprogramming.com yeah, to modify the code you'd have to learn the language it's written in (in most cases)...

As for porting variations of the Quake II engine i haven't a clue where you'd start, i'm sure you'd be able to find something on porting to pocketPC but i'm also sure it's a very specialist subject so the languages needed would be quite specific.

Cheers,
Jamey


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## af3 (Jun 18, 2008)

Yes, I suspect I will have to do quite a bit of memory tweaking and maybe even impliment a swap file depending on the device. It will be difficult, I hope I can figure it out.


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## shuuhen (Sep 4, 2004)

I've never looked through the tutorials on cprogramming.com, but I've heard they're some of the better online ones. I know there's a few threads in this forum where I went over my recommendations on books. The general rule is the same: Look through the books carefully and decide if you think it's a good one. Deitel & Deitel's are worth checking out. A few publishers have books targeted at beginners, so check out various publishers like Oreilly, Apress and Wrox (don't limit yourself to those though). Usually these publishers do a decent job with their books (although there are many good books they aren't the publisher for).

As for the porting, I've never looked at the Intel XScale, so I don't know how powerful it is. Also, I've never even used a Windows Mobile device or programmed for one, so I can't really say how much less they'll be able to do than a desktop. I wouldn't be surprised if you had to do some graphics programming just to decrease how demanding the graphics would be. Maybe see if you can understand the Quake 2 and/or Doom source code (probably need to go through the book/tutorials first).


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