31–40 of 59 posts
Did you hire people with the intent of having them build a demo for you?
And for other readers... Do either of these things happen much? Does it work?
That's not to say the tutorial/source would be completely unrelated, but it sounds like from your post, that coding isn't something that comes easily which means that in order to make the leap to something that you actually want to do, you'll need more than a book to guide your way.
The great thing about a mentor is that they (should) will have a real life problem for you to solve and they can help you work through some of the subtleties of the problem.
I used to think that anyone can learn to code (this was when I was 18). I find, now, that there are people that are more naturally inclined to it and some people that will never be able to, because their brains don't work that way. I would gently encourage you to be open to discovering where you lie on that spectrum and not to be too disappointed if you've tried but still find yourself swimming in molasses.
If you're used to and good at learning in a school format, MIT OpenCourseWare is excellent. My friends also liked the videos better than learning by book.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
I would go in this general order for beginners. Do all the assignments, and don't cheat. Ask for help on explaining the solution. These courses help in building good fundamentals, then apply what you learn to a personal project.
1. 6.00 - Introduction to CS and Programming (Python)
2. One of: 6.087, 6.092, or 6.096&6.088, (C, Java, C++) respectively.
For scientific computing, pick C and/or C++.
3. 6.046J - Introduction to AlgorithmsDoing #1 already goes a long way to your proposed project.
I started with MIT OpenCourseWare. I was very fortunate to find this lecture series: http://www.youtube.com/edu?edu_search_query=intro+computer+p... because it is class taught at MIT for students entering the CS or engineering programs that have little or no background in Programming Languages.
Hint: Pay attention in the first and second videos close enough and you'll learn how to locate online resources that are provided to the enrolled students.
so before starting with a small project, try to implement a one person tron / snake game in processing - it helps you to start "codethink".
after that i would recommend reading a shitload of books. if you are into mobile apps, try http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596805784/ it's basically a tutorial for making a simple web app in HTML, css, js with no prior knowledge required.
I second the advice about setting up an Ubuntu machine. Windows is unnecessarily painful for development in comparison. Although there are "workarounds" around the problem, you'll find things much easier for development on an Ubuntu or Mac computer. Now for a language recommendation. I am a Ruby programmer, so I've got a pretty heavy lean towards that. Ruby is an exceptionally easy language to learn. There's a book c…
While Ruby is a fantastic language and a joy to program in, if you are planning on heavy computation, python is a much better route to go. While everything can be tweaked and optimized in both languages, python is generally favored for performance and ruby for flexibility. Numpy and Scipy are both quite efficient and provide lots of functionality needed in scientific computation. Down the road, if you have a script t…
However, I would suggest that Python is probably a better beginner/learning language than Ruby. There are many odd ends in the Ruby language that might easily trip an inexperienced coder up.
I think it best to learn how to code by working on an actual project. You seem to already have a project in mind, and I think that would be a fine project. Break it up into steps. First write a program that opens a file, reads the book titles and displays them on the terminal. Then write a program that makes some sort of network connection; maybe download the HTML contents of a website. Etc., etc., until you've learn…
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/
It's free. Do this:
1. Use your current computer. It doesn't matter if you have Linux, OSX, or Windows. What matters is that, right now, you want to learn to code, so you should go learn to code, not learn to setup a new OS.
2. Just use gedit. Don't use vim, vi, emacs, or any "hardcore" editor. On a Mac if you're using a non-English keyboard, use Textwrangler. Learning a new editor is not learning to code.
3. Start now, do what I tell you in the book. Type code in, do not copy-paste, make it run, fix it until it does, do the extra credit, then go on to the next one.
4. Other programmers will tell you to use their favorite tools, just ignore them. Just use gedit, Terminal (cmd on Windows), and python. That is all. Nothing else. Everything else is a distraction.
5. Finally, do it every night, for 2 hours a night, and take a break on one day. You'll be surprised how quick you can get through the book, and you'll get stuck sometimes, but keep doing it.
After that, move on to other more advanced topics and try to learn more stuff, but for now, just do this.