How to Learn Programming

If you want to program to create a game, you will need a game engine to run the game. There are a few options about choosing which game engine to use (you can see some of them here and research more of them online). You can create your own, buy one, or use an open source engine. The game engine is a software that will run the game you create. Creating your own engine will require some experience and buying an engine probably won’t be the best option if you’re just a begginer, so I reccomend that you to do some research and try to find the best open source engine for you. In case you’re worried if open source engines will be terrible, there’s no need to worry! There are many open source engines that are really good and will help you greatly in the beginning and a lot of these engines have pro versions (paid versions that you get extra features) that if you do decide to continue with that engine and want to invest some money for the extra features, you can just upgrade it.

After you’ve chosen which game engine to use (or maybe even create one), you need to determine which programming language you want to use. There is a huge variety of programming languages but the good thing about picking an engine first is that it usually narrows down your options. When you’ve chosen the right engine for you, see which programming languages it supports and if the engine supports more than one, do some research and try to find the best one for you.

The next step is to just start programming! Go find a wiki or simple tutorial for the language that you want to learn and do it. A great and simple tutorial that you can follow is the “Hello World” tutorial. It’s a simple tutorial that most languages will have it which shows you how to display a message using the programming language you chose. You can just type “hello world (programming language) tutorial” in the search engine you use.

Below is a list of resources about programming in general:

• How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary – Great article on how to be a programmer.
• Extreme Programming: A gentle introduction.
• XProgramming – Blog about Extreme Programming.
• Paul Graham has a lot of interesting essays about programming in his website.
• LusikkaMage has a lot of programming tutorials in her youtube channel. Particularly, this one is a great video to watch if you want to get into programming and game design.
• Game Programming Wiki is a good place to find a lot of resources about programming. They have a How Do I Get Started? page and also a Begginer FAQ page.

Have any tips or suggestions on how to start programming? Comment about it below!