Need Web/Programming Help!

[aaron1120]

I have a few questions here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First off, I am looking to create a web page. What would be a good host to start me off?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secondly, do you know of any good web design programs and/or any good internet tutorials.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thirdly, I am interested in teaching myself computer programming, with the aids of guides/books I can get for free or cheaply. Are you aware of any good ones? Also, where would it be a good idea to start with programming, Basic, Visual Basic, C+, etc?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any other tips or comments will be helpful and greatly appreciated. You can either post here or PM me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for any help,

 

 

 

Aaron

[Mercifull]

My post is about webhosting and sites NOT computer programming:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.webhostingtalk.com is the place to go for hosting recommendations. You wont get any bias from people here trying to get you to go with their friend or whatever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best thing to use for making web pages is EditPlus or some other text based editor that highlights code.

[aaron1120]

Thanks for your help. :)

[Celt23]

Thirdly, I am interested in teaching myself computer programming, with the aids of guides/books I can get for free or cheaply. Are you aware of any good ones? Also, where would it be a good idea to start with programming, Basic, Visual Basic, C+, etc?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use For Dummies / Complete Idiot's Guides on the language you're interested. I also recommend C since alot of the later languages (Java, C++ [it's 95% C++], C# ect) are based off it, and it's really flexible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You'll need a compiler to make C programs, and for that I recommend MS Visual C++ Express or Bloodshed Dev-C++

[Darrel104]

You shouldn't focus on two things at once first. For web design I would get a html book and a css book(aka the style tag) and after that depending on what you want you want to make the website for you can learn javascript, php, Sql, ASP and many others. A good website for website development languages would be http://www.w3schools.com/ , it is a great reference but it doesn't go into too much detail so i don't recommend learning from it unless you can't afford books. With Web design programs there is frontpage(microsoft) and dream weaver(adobe) however they are expensive, i know that dream weaver costs $400 but I not too sure about the other. All you really need to write the markup is a basic text editor. A text editor designed especially for programing/web programing is notepad++ witch had a cool few features like tabs for having multiple documents open at once witch you will need and the ability to choose the syntax of the language so it will underline errors in it. I'm not too sure about what books you should get but I have a html for Dummies book and it basically was for dummies so I don't think you should get it. The best bet would be to go to a book store and look at the selection and see witch book you can understand the best without being boring. I'm not sure if you can get them now but i have a reference book for html witch comes it handy when you occasionally forget a few tags. The website that i posted above it also great for reference since the index is always at the left so you can just click on the topic that you forgot and look it up.(it lists all the tags at the end of each chapter/page and their usage) A final thing to remember is to use tables for layout since it will just plain confuse you when you have a good size website, use div tags and then format them with css.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have no idea what books you should get since you don't know what language you want to learn yet. I would say read this http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articl ... cle895.asp , then you will have a little idea about what language you want to start with. To pick out a book you should find one that fits your learning needs like I said before. With some things in programming you may have to read twice or three times and study it to get the hang of it. I don't see the benefit of learning a non object oriented programming language since it only teaches you the basics witch you could of learned with a OOP language in the first place. If you do want to do that then i would suggest BASIC since it is VERY easy to get the hang of with very simple commands but you shouldn't go too far into it since beyond a point it just uses stuff that none of the newer languages use anymore. So you should learn stuff like output,arithmetic, variables, color/locate command, String commands, arrays , file handling stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you a serious about either one of them then you should go to a local community collage and they should have a Introductory course on one of them. I herd that web design get boring once it is no longer a challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here for a very good website witch tons of resources on Quick basic

[aaron1120]

Thanks for your help Darrel. I'll be sure to try some of that out.

[venomai]

Web/css: Just check out w3schools, it should have everything to get you started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Programming: Depends on what you're looking into.

 

 

 

Professional games (like Halo) are usually written with C/C++ variants for the "engine" itself, and then scripting languages are used to create the game content.

 

 

 

Learning HTML/CSS is one thing, but high level programming is much more difficult and time-consuming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm an experienced Java programmer, but I've also tried C/C++.

 

 

 

Java is just as capable as C/C++ for any game you'll be making independently. Java also includes a massive library of utilities to make things easy for you, and the language is very straight-forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'd strongly suggest Java for anyone interested in programming games and/or applications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a dump of links I referred to when I was starting off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Info

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28pr ... anguage%29

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Free Java IDEs

 

 

 

An Integrated Development Environment is the application you'll be coding in.

 

 

 

http://www.eclipse.org/ (one of the best, but very complicated)

 

 

 

http://www.netbeans.org/

 

 

 

http://jcreator.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tutorials

 

 

 

http://www.cokeandcode.com/tutorials

 

 

 

http://www.leepoint.net/notes-java/

 

 

 

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial ... nents.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scripting

 

 

 

When you're comfortable with Java you can start using scripts to build your games/applications.

 

 

 

http://www.jython.org/Project/index.html (Python with Java)

 

 

 

https://pnuts.dev.java.net/ (Java-based scripting language)

 

 

 

http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/ (JavaScript with Java)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Games & Screens

 

 

 

jME is a 3D library for Java game programmers

 

 

 

Bang! Howdy

 

 

 

CosmicBirdie (still in early stages)

[ashozzy2]

Id recomend either Java or Visual basic as a beginers language. Java is easier to learn than c++ in my opinion. As said some where above netbeans is a great free IDE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to build some professional looking application quickly I would definalty recomend visual basic. Its a easy to learn and can produce some powerful programs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for tutorials you should definatly buy a book, they are much better at teaching than online tutorials. Also join a programing community and contribute and discuss your chosen language, you will learn much quicker from other people than constanly books and tutorials.