Just today I got this cute email from a 13-year old:
Dear Mr. Romero,
I’m a thirteen-year-old boy who absolutely loves the games that you’ve made throughout the years, so much that I really want to start programming, however, I don’t know where to start.
BASIC seems too small a language to aid me in what I want to do, create the games graphical engine, but C# and C++ seem a little robust for a beginner. What do you think?
I really want to program, and I know that I do want to learn C# and C++, it’s just that I’m not sure if they’re the best languages for me to start in. I’d sort of like to learn BASIC, but I really can’t find any good tutorials online, do you have any that I could possibly use?
Anyways, I hope that you take time out of your busy schedule to reply, but I won’t be absolutely crushed if you don’t. Thanks.Sincerely,
Zachary
This was an absolutely great, well-written email with an excellent question. My answer is pretty much the same every time: if you want to learn how to code, you should be learning C. You can learn C++ later but I still believe it’s best to go the C/C++ route rather than Visual Basic or some scripting language.
My personal favorite environment is the Visual Studio C++ Standard or Professional Edition. The Standard Edition is around $280 online and has everything you’ll need for quite a while if you’re a beginner.
If you’re on a budget, like, a no-money kind of budget, then you should download, for free, the Visual C++ Express Edition product by Microsoft. There’s even a nice book for complete beginners on Amazon.com that will help a lot.
This dev environment can get you through PC game development, handheld development (PocketPC anyone?) and with enough tweaking you can get it to work with external compilers for special hardware.
Download this page in PDF format
What about “Python” thats a nice beginners language to.
I agree that C is the best language to start with. Its not got the more advanced features of C++ or Java(eg. objects), but it’s still a quite powerful and it’s syntax is similar to most other languages.
One word of warning to those assuming that C and C++ are the same language: There are some differences worth learning about. Best place to learn these are in Herbert Schildt’s “The Complete Reference: C++” by Osborne publishing. It’s definitely the most prized C/C++ book on my shelf! Although obviously not quite for beginners.