Hey guys, i've always been amazed by the work done by homebrewers, and appreciate their efforts. i have no experience in programming, but i was wondering if there was a way i could get into it? by studyin an hour or so a day (iunno by tutorials and stuff) is it realistic learning this way? may i remind you, i have NO programming experience. thoughts? thanks in advance.
The best idea would be to learn C++ programming on the PC first, getting more and more experienced until you're ready to make the jump to the DS. At that point, I'd suggest the TONC tutorials, which assume you already have basic C++ knowledge but are regarded as some of the best tutorials out there. They're for the GBA, but there is very much in common between the GBA and DS so after that it wouldn't take too much effort to switch to DS, plus it's much easier to accurately test GBA code than DS code (emulators for GBA are usually accurate, whereas with the DS you'd mostly be testing on actual hardware most of the time).
1 hour a day isnt really possible to grasp it an learn it all... i did that with HTML for like a week and im good at it, except tables, but it is a much simpler language (HTML) maybe, but it'll be difficult
lol.. it gonna be much harder than yous Basic HTML w/o tables.. IMO you should learn tables or atlease frames/iframes they will help you make those good looking webpages.. its programing kid, C++ is a not very hard language.. least we dont have to do this crap in asm if you have prior programming experience it helps... cause you would know it's not what u know, but how long it takes u to learn it.
BAD! Seriously, bad! No using iframes and the such. Thank god they are being removed in a later HTML spec, they are evil by all rights. If you have a website that relies on iframes, then sorry to day, its not a really good website.
No designer worth his salt uses frames. Also, if you're getting into programming, I recommend C over C++
We're against frames because they're slow and clunky, when a well written php backend or AJAX would do it faster and quicker, and CSS takes care of the layout. Believe me, it's not all about aspx. As far as web fads, it seems that it's all about Ajax, rounded corners, PHP or Ruby on Rails. Edit: Grammar and CSS
styles sheets ya.... ok this is just a question... what would be more secure PHP or Aspx? lol rounded corners
More..secure? Come on, read up on them. ;p Neither are more or less secure then the other. Its based on how the user configures them and how the user scripts in them. If the person makes shitty, buggy code, then thats what they get. Security is based on the user in charge, not on the actual language. When you hear about sites getting "hacked", its not due to PHP, ASPX or any other language, but bugs in the scripts that someone wrote,
Now, to translate this into C++ you'll have to know some syntax and such, and know the basic structure of a simple program. This should be learnt!!! BUT syntaxes isn't that mandatory to learn by heart... you'll always be able to use google or a book to look up functions and other stuff... Might write the solution to this program tomorrow it's half past midnight now... got to sleeeeeep! Good luck dude!!
thanks for all your response guys so its c++ a good place to start? shall i google a tutorial or is a book absolutely necessary?
Everyone has different opinions about learning to code. I would say, for DS, C is good enough. Before I started coding on the DS I only really knew BASIC, and even then I kept forgetting stuff. From my experience, you will need a little more than an hour a day, but once you get going, if you get to like coding, an hour will pass in a few minutes. There are plenty of resources on the net for learning C or C++, or go to your local book store and see if they have some book on it, C is a very common programming language, they should have at least a couple. If you want to start on the PC first, that up to you, I think it would be easier that way as the DS is quite a limited system. However, I learned C (and am still learning) on the DS and I feel I'm picking it up quite well, once you remember how to do loops and if's etc. it's not really hard. There are libraries set up for DS coding, such as libnds (or ndslib, can't remember which way round it is) and PALib, which has a whole bunch of functions to make coding simpler, although you don't learn much about the hardware that way. I'm going to shut up now or I'll start rambling on about nothing.
I pretty much agree with what you've said, my C coding is aswell pretty much self-taught. I guess it might be a smart choice to switch to C++ but dunno, anyway what's still so wrong about not learning about the hardware indepth? You know it's got 2 256x192 screens, 16bit colors, 2 speakers, some buttons and a touchscreen, some CPUs and RAM that should be enough to handle what you're making and that's imo all you need to know Why fiddle with all these registers and initialising every each little bit in the system? I say PALib all the way, at least if you want to get into DS coding real quick and don't need much more than the 2D hardware or some 3D sprites.
Only way you'll know is to try There is as much information in online tutorials as you'll find in a book. So it's just a matter of preference whether you find it easier to learn from a book or a screen. Try your local library if you need a book, the language has been around for ages so using an old book'll be just fine.
