30 Tips for Newbie (Game) Programmers

[shlainn]

Just stumbled upon this on gamedev. Pretty neat writeup.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/EmrahOzer/20121112/181409/30_Tips_For_Newbie_Game_Programmers.php

Personal favorites:

11. Find a mentor but don't ask questions to your mentor as a reflex. First research the problem, if you're stuck then ask for a keyword. Don't underestimate the power of google.

and

19. Learn how to search on google. Seriously, I mean it. Internet is a big junk if you don't know the right keywords.

Half the questions on this forum could be avoided by this

25. When starting to a new language my learning way is: Find a nice book about -> Read most of it ( you'll forget everything but you'll have the keywords) -> Read some example code and analyze them -> Pick a goal and start writing-> If you get stuck look at the example codes -> If you cant find google the problem -> If you can't find related web sites you don't have the right keywords, ask a friend of yours who knows the language -> Search for the new keyword -> Write until next problem

I would replace the first step by "Find a nice tutorial series online" - but that is personal preference

But in general I like the line of thought. What do you guys say?

[jududdar]

I like the logic, it's what I do every time I need a program or script for something. I've tried for years to program - it never works out for some reason, but at work I use many programs and scripts that I've written daily using this method. Google-fu, and the ability to feed the right keywords to sites like Stack Overflow get this non-programmer through automating tasks and closer to maybe calling myself a programmer!

[void513]

lol they realy need a tutorial for looking thing up on google.if tell reaserch or look it up on google they look at u like ur crazy or dont know what ur talking about.kids now days dont seem know how search for anything.aleast back in day before internet we had good excuse.u had dial up boards to for something online.

[Unkle Nuke]

Google used to be a decent search engine, until their ad-driven profit model turned it into a machine for sites to spam you. No matter how carefully you try using boolean operators and multiple keywords to narrow your search, you wind up with page after page of ads and useless junk. If you try to narrow your search parameters too much, Google simply returns nothing. Can't have you excluding all of their income sources! Top it all off with Google mining data on you, based on your Google account or IP address to identify you, and their "bubble" policy of blacklisting sites.

You're much better off searching directly through the programming sites of your choice. It's far more accurate than Google's all-or-nothing shotgun approach.

If you must do a web search, I find Yahoo! gives you much more relevant results than Google. Which is ironic since Google became so popular for better searching than Yahoo!. DuckDuckGo is still very new and tends to return very few hits, but they don't smother you with an endless barrage of links, either. I like it for its strict privacy policy and not blocking sites from your searches. Other good general search sites are Altavista and Dogpile.

For specifically doing code searches, I recommend Koders, the Snippets archive, SWiK, Planet Source Code, and The Code Project. Practice those search skills to find their sites.

For those wanting to learn C++, try these sites:

www.cppreference.com

www.cplusplus.com

www.cprogramming.com

www.cpp-home.com

lgwm.org

cpptutorials.freeforums.org

www.codeacademy.com (they also have an excellent Python course.)

For general programming help:

www.zedwood.com

www.developer.com

www.freeprogrammingresources.com

www.programmersheaven.com

That ought to be enough to get anyone going, if they have an internet connection for their PC.

Now, lets start seeing everyone line up to become a MaNGOS developer!

[kupix_]

Because Mangos is based on reactor pattern (and singleton used here and there), some might want to read a bit about it. but defintly after reading all above tutorials ;-) if you still want to learn about it, find ACE website and try to read their tutorials (author of ACE shares quite a lot of c++ tuts on the web).