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An almost Silly Blog Post


BLaBZ

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So I'm the guy who writes 7k lines of code only to find out that "I'm doing it wrong." If you haven't been there then you probably haven't learned much.

 

This is going to make me sound like a complete idiot, but damn! I really feel like one. After coding as a hobby for 3 years I'm finding out now I never really knew how OOP worked and how fantastically useful inheritance and polymorphism really is.

 

It seems like everyday I'm learning something new about programming, languages have so much flexibility it's really just a matter of being aware of what it's capable of.

 

I love programming and I'd really like to do it professionally some day, but it seems like I'm constantly learning new things that are essential to programming.

 

How do you know when you've "conquered" a language and are ready to use it "professionally?"

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Honestly conquering a "language" is the easy part. Getting to know all the libraries a language has takes more time and is never ending as new libraries come out.

 

.NET is a good example of that. The language itself isn't hard, but there are tons of classes and frameworks in .NET, that will keep you busy for years and years.

 

The language of C++ isn't all that hard, but there are endless amount of libraries for it and learning a bunch of those (and weeding through the bad ones) can take time.

 

The best advice about learning the language and different features would be to read online, and ask questions here. The biggest drawback I find in this community is that most people don't want to talk about design. I don't know if they don't want anyone to steal their design or what, but talking about how you want to design some class or your entire game really helps get a wide range of views on it.

 

Doing a design yourself can be rewarding but chances are you'll miss something that if you talked about it would have come out, and you could save yourself a ton of time later on in your development.

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There is only one way to learn and that is by doing, so you are just right on track. Learning on how to avoid mistakes is by doing them.

 

Happy coding :)

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You will (hopefully) learn your whole life. :)

 

I learn new workflows, shortcuts or whatever with every project too. The point from where you do it professionally is the point where you feel confident enough to call your work professional.

 

I had this feeling around 2007-2008. Before that time I knew I'm doing ok but not professional.

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I'm in the same position as you as knowing how to code in C++ but not knowing how to code properly. One thing that has helped is looking at all the code snippets that other people have posted here and now that I look at all the stuff I've coded it seems far more messy than it did when I originally coded it.

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Your blog is like reading a biografy that goes about myself. Every day there are new opertuneties to learn some new things and to try hundreds of scripts.

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Honestly conquering a "language" is the easy part. Getting to know all the libraries a language has takes more time and is never ending as new libraries come out.

 

.NET is a good example of that. The language itself isn't hard, but there are tons of classes and frameworks in .NET, that will keep you busy for years and years.

 

The language of C++ isn't all that hard, but there are endless amount of libraries for it and learning a bunch of those (and weeding through the bad ones) can take time.

 

The best advice about learning the language and different features would be to read online, and ask questions here. The biggest drawback I find in this community is that most people don't want to talk about design. I don't know if they don't want anyone to steal their design or what, but talking about how you want to design some class or your entire game really helps get a wide range of views on it.

 

Doing a design yourself can be rewarding but chances are you'll miss something that if you talked about it would have come out, and you could save yourself a ton of time later on in your development.

 

That's awesome to hear! I found that once you understand one language(if it a decently capable one) picking up another language is pretty easy! Typically the only difference is syntax and a few capability differences hear and there.

 

I read a quote that said "Don't program in a language program into a language" which basically translates to "Don't make the language your limitation, code it how you would think it." So if there's something I want to do, and I'm not aware of how a language would do it, I post on a forum, and it seems like whoever designed the language thankfully thought of it before me :D

 

The code is now bending to my desires as oppose to me bending to the codes limitations

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