Hi, MrbrianM. I started learning to program when I first learned web design. The site I found really useful was W3Schools[www.w3schools.com]. First, I learned how to layout websites with HTML and CSS, and then I learned how to program with JavaScript.

If you want to learn a language that is more applicable the gaming industry, I would suggest learning C++ or Python. I have found YouTube user thenewboston's tutorials to be really helpful for beginners.

Hello, MrbrianM!

Also, Code Academy[www.codecademy.com] can be a valuable resource for beginning development/ learning languages. It turns a lot of elements into a game, so learning can feel pretty rewarding.

I do not believe it offers C++ though.

引用自 Mint：

Hi, MrbrianM. I started learning to program when I first learned web design. The site I found really useful was W3Schools[www.w3schools.com]. First, I learned how to layout websites with HTML and CSS, and then I learned how to program with JavaScript.

If you want to learn a language that is more applicable the gaming industry, I would suggest learning C++ or Python. I have found YouTube user thenewboston's tutorials to be really helpful for beginners.

Thanks Mint, I will also be checking those sites out.

I second Conagher's suggestion of Code Academy[www.codecademy.com] and would also like to suggest Code School[www.codeschool.com]. They do a great job of "gamifying" learning to program and have some quality, easy to follow tutorial videos that go along with every lesson. You can pay money to get the full experience with Code School[www.codeschool.com] but i know there are free lessons as well.

Hello, MrbrianM! I found antiRTFM's C++ tutorials extremely helpful and in-depth. thenewboston's tutorials are also very good. Eventually if you want to get in to game design, thebennybox's tutorial series (that is still ongoing at the time of writing) is a beautiful and very detailed introduction to game engine design. It's aimed at Java, but once you are fluent with C++, transcribing the code is very easy. The tutorials also use OpenGL, which is mostly identical across programming languages. The concepts can also be applied to learning DirectX/Direct3D and help when going about 3D design.

I don't recommend Codecademy at all, I have experience with their terrible teaching methods, and feel that they fail to properly teach the basics of programming. Codecademy also fails to allow their students to solve the problems that they are presented with in their own way; students are required to complete exercises with predetermined lines of code, where any deviation is a automatic failure.

I DO however suggest the http://thenewboston.org tutorials, which are very informative, digestible, and include every detail from the creating of the initial files to the end result.

P.S. W3Schools is awesome by the way, an amazing Web Design/Web Development reference site.

Thanks a lot for all of this, guys! I'm in a similar situation to that of MrbrianM, and all of these resources will be very, very helpful for me.

One thing I've been considering is buying a book that I can carry around with me and read when I'm stuck somewhere and have nothing else to do. To get to and from school, I have to sit around on trains and buses for a long time.
Can anyone recommend any good books for this type of thing, or would I be better off just sticking to online resources?

Really guys, thanks again. This has been great.

Hi Brian,

The theory is more important than picking a particular language. Pick one to start, but once you understand how to program in one language, jumping to another language is much much easier than learning your first. After three or four (which probably sounds incredibly daunting before you've even started one), they all more or less become the same, with only syntactical differences. The core philosophy, patterns and techniques apply to all of programming.

I personally started with Visual Basic which I wouldn't recommend anymore, but Javascript, Ruby, C# and even Applescript are pretty good languages to start with. C++ is more commonly used in games development, but as a 'lower-level ' (more advanced) language it's probably best to get some grounding in the basics before you dive deep into the extremely complex world of C++. That's of course assuming (since this is Pipline), that you're interested in games dev.

Chickenlordable: I personally started C++ with the book 'C++ Without Fear', plus all the other books in my local public and school library. Online resources are great, but I find it's often much easier and quite valuable to learn something when you're away from the computer and your code, and you can just focus on a bit of theory _before_ trying to apply it immediately.

When I started coding, I started with a really esoteric language, called Scheme(now renamed to Racket, www.racket-lang.org). The benifit I found, however, to using this somewhat unknown language is how well it teaches and forces you to follow good programming structure and methodology. If you are interested in that, you should check out the free book that teaches it to you at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/. The main reason people would have an inssue with Racket is due to its not being object oriented, and is functional instead. This causes for a slightly different mindset, and is not really used much for development (it's even called a "learning language"), but it worked out fine for me, seeing as I made the jump to C++ eventually (as it is a more widely accepted development language). The reason I do not want to suggest C++ or Java as your first language is because of just how many bad tutorials that exist for it, and it can be very hard to find the difference between good and bad code with languages so widly missused. The nice thing about the book I linked to above is that this is the language's official book, and has a very good understanding of programming methodology and abstractions.

If you do not want to start with an esoteric functional language, however, I can understand that. As a replacement, I would suggest watching the Stanford University online videos for classes 106A (programming methodology in Java) and 106B (programming abstractions in C++), while doing the assignments posted there for practice. As far as I can tell, anybody is able of accessing them, so check out CS106A.stanford.edu and CS106B.stanford.edu if you want to try that out. From there, its your choice about where to go, but those are my two best suggestions.

If you pick up a programming book, or any other tutorial, you are going to want to work along with it. Or I promise you, you won't learn a thing.

Another great resource which i'm actually going to use is Coursera. they offer a huge variety of classes for free where you can get a certificate of completion and even credit hours depending what college you go to. This semester I'm taking an intro to programming and a programming games with C# course

A great place to start learning is with html you can learn everything you need to know at w3 schools website: http://www.w3schools.com/html/ . After you learn how to make a basic program through html, (i think html is the easiest) you can go to code acadamy and really start learning some great languages: http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0 . GLHF

I can suggest Unity and C#. A good introduction to C# that I found was this[channel9.msdn.com].

Programming skills are necessarily for a game designer?

引用自 Trykoza.Tar：

Programming skills are necessarily for a game designer?

As a designer, not really. You design the gameplay, feel, and pacing of the game. As a developer (which means programmer), obviously yes it is. If you're going to make a game on your own, you will certainly have to learn to code unless you can find someone else to do that for you.