Renegen on 8/10/2006 at 09:52

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I did a stupid class where we learned binary conversions and how computers work and a bit of assembly, like a simple greater than program and substraction etc in assembly, not planned for this current career. I also took calculus and am currently taking algebra although I don't quite understand how I'll incorporate it in my codes. Maybe the thinking process?

scumble on 8/10/2006 at 10:52

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I found it worthwhile to spend some quality time with Java, because I gained a good understanding of object-oriented development, and the benefits of using such methods.

Definitely not a necessity, but useful, and the freely available tools (Netbeans IDE) and documentation (Java tutorial at Sun's site) make it relatively easy to get into.

Note that Visual C++ Express is available for free at (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/) msdn if you want to have a go with it.

Navyhacker006 on 8/10/2006 at 13:11

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A very simple rule that I've found to be useful:
Make it work. Then, make it pretty.

More often than not, if you can make something work, you'll feel more confident about tackling bigger problems, which will give you insight into how to make your earlier code work better.

For example: I wrote a shell script to run nethack (sort of like a baby version of alt.org, but before I knew about them). It was ugly, bad code, but I made something work, so that when I learned more, I went back and rewrote it, with less suck. It's still ugly, but it does the job.

Another example: I wrote a really sick (as in, ailing) Battleship game during a car trip home two years ago. It provided the necessities, but not much more. I'm in the process of re-visiting it and making it do simple, important things like, oh, I dunno, prevent the player from placing a ship diagonally. However, there's a small problem with trying to update it:

I didn't leave many comments. Comments are useful, believe it or not. What sems obvious at the time could, in as little as a couple of weeks, become strange, alien code that you don't have the faintest clue about. But don't write comments for other people; write them for yourself. Chances are, 'speaking' like that will shed more light on what you're trying to do than saying " ... and then I grabbed a hand full of feathers and here I'm ending the for loop for i < 12"

Swiss Mercenary on 8/10/2006 at 15:44

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Indeed. Your comments should say what the code does, rather then HOW it does it.


Something like:

i++; //add 1 to i here

is completely useless, as any idiot knows what ++ does.

Instead, something like:

i++; //And here we skip the next loop cycle, for reason _______

is much more helpful.

TTK12G3 on 8/10/2006 at 17:15

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Apparently no one here likes JAVA. Sorry I brought it up...