DS Development and programming in general

[iritegood]

Well, inspired by all the great homebrew out there, I've decided to pick up programming as a personal project.
However, I have absolutely no idea where to start. I wanted to learn python, seeing as how it looks so minimalistic and easy-to-read compared to the other languages I've found. (except for lolcode of course)

Where should I start? Which books should I read? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Azimuth]

Python is an excellent choice, its easy and fun to learn, has nice syntax and is very widely used so you will get help easily.
Programming python is one of the most widely used python books and the 3rd edition is free, its kinda become the standard python book.

What exactly do you want to program though, do you want to code nds games or do you just want to learn a programming language?

 

[iritegood]

Python is an excellent choice, its easy and fun to learn, has nice syntax and is very widely used so you will get help easily.
Programming python is one of the most widely used python books and the 3rd edition is free, its kinda become the standard python book.

What exactly do you want to program though, do you want to code nds games or do you just want to learn a programming language?

Games are a lot more interesting to me, and specifically DS homebrew.
Thanks for the link

 

[Azimuth]

Python is an excellent choice, its easy and fun to learn, has nice syntax and is very widely used so you will get help easily.
Programming python is one of the most widely used python books and the 3rd edition is free, its kinda become the standard python book.

What exactly do you want to program though, do you want to code nds games or do you just want to learn a programming language?


Games are a lot more interesting to me, and specifically DS homebrew.
Thanks for the link

Then learn C/C++, python would be a waste of time if all you are interested in is DS homebrew. I would personally recommend learning python before jumping straight to C/C++ which will be hard if you have no programming experience.

 

[iritegood]

Python is an excellent choice, its easy and fun to learn, has nice syntax and is very widely used so you will get help easily.
Programming python is one of the most widely used python books and the 3rd edition is free, its kinda become the standard python book.

What exactly do you want to program though, do you want to code nds games or do you just want to learn a programming language?


Games are a lot more interesting to me, and specifically DS homebrew.
Thanks for the link

Then learn C/C++, python would be a waste of time if all you are interested in is DS homebrew. I would personally recommend learning python before jumping straight to C/C++ which will be hard if you have no programming experience.

Ey? Didn't realise that, I guess I'll just start off with python. C/C++ syntax seems complicated. The most programming I've had is probably javascript, which was actually quite simple.

 

[Deleted User]

hehe I guess I was one of the source of your python love.
Python is very good for prototyping program however if you really plan on writing ds games, it's not really a good place to start, except if you plan on doing some 3d on the ds. In this case I'd suggest you try making an opengl game with pyopengl, this way when learning C/C++ afterwards you could port your existing game, as the libnds (and thus the ds hardware) is similar to opengl.

 

[Azimuth]

deufeufeu, I'm sure you'll enjoy this

He's right about the whitespace....

 

[Deleted User]

deufeufeu, I'm sure you'll enjoy this

He's right about the whitespace....

Whitespace is good !
as an example of evil : fortran doesn't feel whitespace is needed even when reading a variable : so FOR I FOR I which is the name of the counter ? yes it's IFORI

as an example of good : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_%2...ing_language%29

Winners use whitespace !

This was an advertisment brought to you by the Whitespace company

 

[Mangofett]

Easy wey to get started:

1. learn the basic C syntax, it should take you a day to a week, depending if you're lazy or... uhh... not lazy
2. find devkitpro somewhere, install it.
3. go to palib.com, and install palib
4. look at some of the examples and try your own hand at coding, palib is very easy to use, no need to worry about the technical aspect of it, its just things like drawSprite(x,y,sprite,pallete); or something and not like devkitpro where its like: set_video_mode(complicated things); allocate_vram(blablabla);

 

[test84]

Would you guys help in learning Object Oriented Game development?
I know programming in C/C++ and i even developed a snake for DOS, but for larger games, i'm so confused with OO disciplines, i donno how to Design the game (NOT coding it, DESIGNING).

Like how to build proper Access functions for objects and how to share methods in order to follow OO rules and make re-use objects.

(i dont mean to hijack your topic, but my question seems relevant)

 

[Azimuth]

test84, you might want to check this out. OO is easy, it just takes a while for things to click.

small example in ruby:

class Animal
Âattr_reader :name Â#accessor
Â
Âdef initialize(name) #sets initial state of new object
 Â@name = name
Âend

Âdef hello
  print "My name is ", @name
Âend
end

now when I call:

person = Animal.new("John")

person is assigned as an animal with "John" as a name, thats great but how do I retrieve the object's name later on? thats what accessors are for, they allow you to call up variables from outside the class or "access" them.

person.name => "John"
person.hello => "My name is John"

To share methods you have to use inheritance which is a whole other subject. Hope I helped you a bit.