Question - Learning to code!

[RCgaming10377]

Hello, I'm hoping Sic or CWTN will answer me. But how did you guys learn to code? I'm trying to learn PHP and Lua is it possible I can know where yall started? And I know I must code to get better at it. I'm just looking for a solid learning path. Thanks all answers are welcomed! I'm just lost lol

Special thanks to Sic or CWTN if they reply to this. I hope I'm putting this in the right place forgive me if this isn't the off-topic thread.

 

[Sic]

I know very little, I only started progamming in 2019. We have some amazing people around the community with varying levels of professional and personal experience. Talking with them is huge.

Finding a problem you want to solve, and then finding solutions to that will help a ton.

I started on discord with a kissassist conditional statement :p

 

[GoldenFrog]

I know very little, I only started progamming in 2019. We have some amazing people around the community with varying levels of professional and personal experience. Talking with them is huge.

Finding a problem you want to solve, and then finding solutions to that will help a ton.

I started on discord with a kissassist conditional statement :p

Reinforcing what Sic said. The easiest way is to start with a problem you want to solve. Simple tasks are better.

Then try to do it.
Learn how to run an empty script that does nothing.
Then add something that outputs some text, maybe.
Then start adding the logic you want for your task; looking at other scripts that do the same or similar things. See how they are doing it, or why, or when. Copy from those snippets and make it do what you want.

Rinse, repeat.

 

[Lord Sivion]

Learning the level of coding / scripts necessary for this kind of project type isn't too demanding to be honest. Still requires a good deal of dedication though, and isn't for everyone. I would contribute myself except for the rabbit hole thing I have going on. Once I start, I go all in. I do enough of this stuff (on a different level) for my job already. And for me, playing EQ and using MQ is about fun and relaxation. So, I lean on other contributors here to provide me with the work they have done already. I am tempted to get involved, but I just don't think it's a good idea. Plus, the wife might not approve. She's all about me relaxing, and having fun when I am not working.

BTW: You can pick up some material on Amazon for cheap on whatever languages you want to start to learn with. Or, take beginner classes with a community college online course.

 

[RCgaming10377]

Learning the level of coding / scripts necessary for this kind of project type isn't too demanding to be honest. Still requires a good deal of dedication though, and isn't for everyone. I would contribute myself except for the rabbit hole thing I have going on. Once I start, I go all in. I do enough of this stuff (on a different level) for my job already. And for me, playing EQ and using MQ is about fun and relaxation. So, I lean on other contributors here to provide me with the work they have done already. I am tempted to get involved, but I just don't think it's a good idea. Plus, the wife might not approve. She's all about me relaxing, and having fun when I am not working.

BTW: You can pick up some material on Amazon for cheap on whatever languages you want to start to learn with. Or, take beginner classes with a community college online course.

Reinforcing what Sic said. The easiest way is to start with a problem you want to solve. Simple tasks are better.

Then try to do it.
Learn how to run an empty script that does nothing.
Then add something that outputs some text, maybe.
Then start adding the logic you want for your task; looking at other scripts that do the same or similar things. See how they are doing it, or why, or when. Copy from those snippets and make it do what you want.

Rinse, repeat.

I know very little, I only started progamming in 2019. We have some amazing people around the community with varying levels of professional and personal experience. Talking with them is huge.

Finding a problem you want to solve, and then finding solutions to that will help a ton.

I started on discord with a kissassist conditional statement :p

Thanks for tips and replies guys, I'm going to read the Doc on the php webpage and go from there. Thanks again you all have been very helpful!

 

[dewey2461]

I started as a kid when my parents got an osborn 1 in the early 1980's. There was no software except what came with the computer. Over the summer I read the entire 500+ page manual, from cover to cover and learned enough basic to write / modify the 3 or 4 games that came with the system.

There are a few key things about learning to code.

#1 - Getting started is the hardest part.
#2 - Have a passion project that you REALLY want to solve.
#3 - Never give up, but, ...
#4 - Be ready to try a different approach.

When I started in MQ2 back in 2005 I learned it like I learned how to code in the '80's.

I read the entire MQ2 manual. I looked at the source code for the macros I used. Then I started tweaking them to do things differently, or just to see how they worked. Eventually I did the same with the C plugins.

Finally when you do get stuck, ask questions in a way that people can offer help.

example of a bad question. "I can't get my rogue to follow my leader"

example of a good question. "I'm using KA to run a group. I've read over the documentation and it says I should "abc" but I just can't get my rogue working"

1 - State the problem
2 - Give context for the problem
3 - State what you have done to solve the problem
4 - Provide supporting material as needed.


Writing code can be very rewarding. Start small and work your way up. Good luck !

 

[RCgaming10377]

I started as a kid when my parents got an osborn 1 in the early 1980's. There was no software except what came with the computer. Over the next summer I read the manual 500+ page manual from cover to cover and learned enough basic to write / modify the 3 or 4 games that came with the system.

There are a few key things about learning to code.

#1 - Getting started is the hardest part.
#2 - Have a passion project that you REALLY want to solve.
#3 - Never give up, but, ...
#4 - Be ready to try a different approach.

When I started in MQ2 back in 2005 I learned it like I learned how to code in the '80's.

I read the entire MQ2 manual. I looked at the source code for the macros I used. Then I started tweaking them to do things differently, or just to see how they worked. Eventually I did the same with the C plugins.

Finally when you do get stuck, ask questions in a way that people can offer help.

example of a bad question. "I can't get my rogue to follow my leader"

example of a good question. "I'm using KA to run a group. I've read over the documentation and it says I should "abc" but I just can't get my rogue working"

1 - State the problem
2 - Give context for the problem
3 - State what you have done to solve the problem
4 - Provide supporting material as needed.


Writing code can be very rewarding. Start small and work your way up. Good luck !

100%, Thank you

 

[ChatWithThisName]

I started with macros. Then I went to college up to programming fundamentals III, and started learning C++ to convert existing macros into plugins, all the while picking the brains of the people that were willing to answer questions despite my slow nature at picking it up.
I can't say I necessarily suggest starting with macros since Lua is an option now. It's a language that is widely used outside of EQ and should have documentation for a lot of your questions. You'll also have example from other members of the community to look at so that you can see how someone achieves a specific task.

Some of the basics to understand is how code flows, different data types (int, float, string etc) and how to manipulate them, writing an if statement. Writing an if else statement, writing for loops and while loops.

 

[Szazor]

I started programming in the 80's on the Commodore 64 at age 10. In the good ol days we would buy a book full of adventure games and painstakingly type every bit of code in, one line at a time - and then spend hours debugging it and trying to get them to run.
The struggle was real!

The huge advantage that you have these days is You tube and the Internet. There are lessons on just about anything.

I would definitely start with a very basic task.

Step 0: Download and install Visual Studio Code and may you never know the struggle of the vi editor. (If you know - you know)

Step 1 - Open up some of the Lua scripts - or Macro's to see if any thing makes sense.

Here is one of the example's. FISH.Lua (No idea who wrote this btw - I think its in VV as an example)

This is a great example to learn some of the syntax. Initial Setup, How to setup your main loop, How to declare and use functions. How to handle events. There is a lot that this little Lua can teach you.

 

[naamloseeen]

For PHP I highly recommend watching some YouTube tutorials. There is some very good content there. (There's also some bad content, but PHP has been popular enough for long enough that the good outweighs the bad.)

I've been watching Derek Banas for many years now, but there are tons of other options too. Here's his full PHP tutorial: .

Oddly enough, he also has a Lua tutorial. I've been a programmer for years, but Lua has some....quirks, so this video helped me get going on some Lua scripts: .

What are you hoping to do with PHP?

 

[RCgaming10377]

For PHP I highly recommend watching some YouTube tutorials. There is some very good content there. (There's also some bad content, but PHP has been popular enough for long enough that the good outweighs the bad.)

I've been watching Derek Banas for many years now, but there are tons of other options too. Here's his full PHP tutorial: .

Oddly enough, he also has a LUA tutorial. I've been a programmer for years, but LUA has some....quirks, so this video helped me get going on some LUA scripts: .

What are you hoping to do with PHP?

Web development mainly

 

[Silverspaceman]

No one's mentioned pseudocode as a learning tool? Yeah everyone hated that in class too.

 

[dewey2461]

No one's mentioned pseudocode as a learning tool? Yeah everyone hated that in class too.

Good catch.

Flowcharts, data diagrams, and story boarding are all useful tools to help explore the problem and provide focus/organization for how to break a problem down into bite sized chunks.

I still remember one of my profs using the example of going to class. Had the class list out the big steps like:

Wake up
Get dressed
Eat breakfast
...

Then break each step down into smaller and smaller steps.

Was a great example of a top down approach to problem solving.

 

[wired420]

Web development mainly

You need HTML, CSS, and Javascript first. You'll be using all three heavily in conjunction with PHP to make it do anything more than a extremely basic site. PHP is just a scripting language that utilizes the other mentioned languages to dynamically create pages.

 

[doomzday]

I tried teaching myself code and while I understood it I didn't really grasp it until I learned how to write psuedo code before sitting down to write a single line of code.

My biggest break through was using chatgpt to get answers for how to write example code. For example, if I look up a data structure using google it will only return examples written by the smartest people in the world and they don't make sense to me. I find that chatgpt does not have an ego and writes code that is understandable for people of average intelligence. Maybe the code written by super genius programmer runs faster or looks cool to other people in his peer group but I don't care about that. I think this is main reason many people I know get frustrated trying to learn to code.

 

[Daxchu]

A lot of great info on here. For my particular way of learning, the main thing that helps is having a task I want to complete and an idea in which language/tool I want to do it in.

Psuedo code is undervalued as a teaching mechanism. Similar to the task mentioned by Dewey above, the very first thing my first CS teacher did was ask someone in the class to stand up and provide step by step instructions to another student in the class with the goal of sharpening their pencil in the sharpener at the front of class. It turned out to be a really good exercise and left an impression with me.

ChatGPT has been a useful tool for some things I've been doing lately. Avoid the temptation to have it do the work for you. I've been playing with it to teach me syntax of some other languages/tools. Instead of giving it a script and say convert it to x language, I'll take a few lines and ask it to show me how the same task would be done in the other. Then I tend to ask it follow-up questions about why it did it in particular ways. The follow ups have been the most helpful part of the process. I'm surprised how often it will rethink what it provided the first time and give a different answer. After getting a bit of comfort with some particular module, I then tend to go do research in docs or on instructional videos in youtube and sometimes go back to the AI once I have additional knowledge that I can use for the follow-ups.

 

[Bholm]

I started with Arduino it may not be the top choice but i found it fun as i could build electronic parts that could do various tasks around the house ie. improved coffee maschine for the wife, improved vision for the robot vacuume etc. then from there i took some C++ and C sharp (just basic beginner level) while expanding on the electronic parts learning logic etc as that helped me really understand and be interested in code in general

As others have said it's also a very good thing to look at other people's code, or ideas on youtube etc. as you can pickup a lot of ideas and see how people begin working on a problem solve.
Personal i ended up working with in the maritime area as a electronic tech, with the understanding of code and general IT network.. and i've been loving it ever since.

Ps. what i love about redguides is the amount of helpful people here, and the vast amount of knowledge here.

 

[sheijo]

Hello, I'm hoping Sic or CWTN will answer me. But how did you guys learn to code? I'm trying to learn PHP and lua is it possible I can know where yall started? And I know I must code to get better at it. I'm just looking for a solid learning path. Thanks all answers are welcomed! I'm just lost lol

Special thanks to Sic or CWTN if they reply to this. I hope I'm putting this in the right place forgive me if this isn't the off-topic thread.

I’m a Comp E degree holder (CS mixed with EE). The basics of coding are pretty easy and it’s just doing basic drills and reputation to get it ingrained. I learned to code in C++ and after that I know the basics and can code in just about anything as long as I can look up the source documentation for syntax. Though somethings get tricky you can figure it out.

For resources get like a text book for that language. It’s not needed but can be good reference. You can also look into learn to code the hard way; I did some Python stuff from him and it’s not bad, you will need to supplement with coding exercises. Things like hacker rank, codeingame, ect. will help build the skills into memory.

Coding is one of those things you have to do to learn, and in school we had all kinds of dumb exercises to build. In fact here is a link to the notes of the guy who taught me object oriented programming, assuming you want to learn C++. There are also some basic Python notes in there.

CS 2124 - Syllabus and Lecture Notes

 

[daviesthomas]

I learned coding through online tutorials and practice projects. Starting with simple exercises, I gradually tackled more complex tasks, using resources like Codecademy and YouTube videos like this. Consistent practice and experimentation were key to my progress. I excel when given a clear task and know the specific language or tool I want to utilize. On the topic of coding tools, I've been contemplating developing a bot akin to papertyper, designed by my adept developer friend. Her brilliance shines through; such a bot could greatly assist users in generating high-quality papers. Furthermore, ChatGPT has revolutionized my learning experience recently. I've leveraged it to grasp syntax across various languages. Rather than relying solely on it, I pose follow-up questions, which prove immensely beneficial. It's astounding how it reconsiders and offers alternative responses at times, akin to human thought processes.

 

[EQ74]

Regarding web development.

W3C provides free online tutorials and resources at https://www.w3schools.com/ while https://www.udemy.com/ provides many courses covering a range of topics at varying cost.

I would the w3school resource along with many of the other stated resources listed by other knowledgeable members.

EQ74

 

[RobRenfro]

For PHP I highly recommend watching some YouTube tutorials. There is some very good content there. (There's also some bad content, but PHP has been popular enough for long enough that the good outweighs the bad.)

I've been watching Derek Banas for many years now, but there are tons of other options too. Here's his full PHP tutorial: .

Oddly enough, he also has a LUA tutorial. I've been a programmer for years, but LUA has some....quirks, so this video helped me get going on some LUA scripts: .

What are you hoping to do with PHP?

I'm gonna watch these that's a scary thought. LoL