Learning How to Really Program/Code

You don't need complicated math for most coding for businesses. There are so many tools and libraries and the major established DBA's already you mostly don't have to build your own database system anymore. Mainly for more complex simulation goals and applications one may need more math. The computer engineers have already done most of the hard math work already in the electrically engineered hardware. Many coding packages already have built in customizable searching and sorting functions. Unless you want to figure it out for yourself or hired to do a very independent project, the "wheel" doesn't have to be reinvented for most tools already like writing compilers or operating systems for example. But you may need to be familiar with basic discrete math and logic, and also the concepts and practical use of recursion vs. procedural for the minimal "math background".

Along with the helpful links others have posted, here are a few more free intro links.

http://www.relisoft.com/book/

http://learn.jquery.com/javascript-101/

https://netbeans.org/
 
Quote from 2rosy:

this is very simple and will get you productive but as I said before 99% give up within a couple weeks.

http://www.openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/
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I love this link.. been reading it.. I met a founder of a very popular linux distro at a conference , he told me specifically to learn python.. ironically my intro to programming teacher told me python was going no where in his opinion.. I'm taking the founder of centos advice..
 
I personally am going to remain mostly agnostic... I'm doing the computer science deal at UCF .....I'll end up having to take classes in java.. And C++... I think they should teach intro to programming in python instead of vb
 
Quote from cdcaveman:

I love this link.. been reading it.. I met a founder of a very popular linux distro at a conference , he told me specifically to learn python.. ironically my intro to programming teacher told me python was going no where in his opinion.. I'm taking the founder of centos advice..
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caveman... linux is cool if you need a quick livecd/usb or something but eventually you should check out BSD's. GNU/Linux is a hackjob. I started with slackware back in the late 90's as a kid and these days run Arch on a VM for bleeding edge shit to see where linux is at, only thing they have going is more drivers but why not use a mac for that (BSD based) or windows.

I would never run centOS on a server over OpenBSD or FreeBSD, but I do agree you should learn python. If my teacher told me python is going nowhere, I would probably leave that class.

For python I used the good ol' http://www.diveintopython.net/


to the OP...

I think anyone with a decent head on their shoulders can learn programming as long as they have a strong focus.

I was in AP CS in high school and majored in CS in college only to drop out because it sucked. I learned nothing in college for what i was doing and was never exceptional in math, although wasn't that bad.

As you can see from above, I was interested in writing drivers for UNIX systems and hacking kernels so naturally my only 2 books I read were "C Programming Language" (awesome book) and Perl Programming (awesome book). From there is was talking to people on IRC, reading 'man' pages and looking at source and various writings on the net.

These days I barely program, some quick shell, perl, or python scripts at most and I still like messing with X window managers in BSD or Linux so I also play with some functional ones in config files which use Lisp/Scheme and Haskell which are great and also some lua which is pretty cool too and is used in one of my fav xwm's called "awesome" lol.

These days I might start with python... from there on it's all about picking the right tool for the right job. It's a way of thinking, learning syntax to a language can take awhile but if someone is proficient at C or perl for example they should be able to pick up python or ruby with ease... although they might not want to :) perl rocks...

A highly regarded book : "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan and Pike may be interesting to programmers.
 
Quote from Satan's Helper:

I just don't have the educational foundation
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Ask lots of questions.

Yahoo Answers has a programming section that is, from what I've seen, very friendly to people that post questions. It's more of a Q/A format site that could help as you move along in your learning. Stackoverflow also seems to be a pretty good place to get some questions answered.
 
Quote from nitro:

Find something that is so captivating and interesting to you that the effort underneath is not even concious.
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This is a great idea--best way to learn anything. I believe it is how Montessori engages children.

Why would I ever want to put 8 queens on a chessboard, anyway.
 
Quote from Satan's Helper:

Math is not exactly the issue. I have no problems building my own formulas because I understand how bars are formed and the relationships between data s. The issue is I never made it past 6th grade and even before that I never paid attention in school. I was a bad student and that is a understatement.

The math related issue is math terminology that languages are based on. For example "Boolean vs, Double". To me that is a input or Value. I still don't know how to multiply or divide so Algebra terms are a big issue.
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Ok, you want to convert some EasyLanguage to C++/C#/Java. Is that all? What else are you trying to accomplish?

As mentioned previously, EasyLanguage is procedural. You can easily write procedural code in C++ and C# without going anywhere near OOP. Indicators and simple functions do not need to be retrofitted into an object with private and public data and methods... That would be overkill for something that is basically "take x input and return y output".

C++ used to be called "C with Classes" back in the 80's. Which means C++ was still C at its core. Despite the huge advances and enhancements since then, I'm pretty sure you can still write C-ish code. Suboptimal, perhaps, but still possible.

So the question remains - what are you trying to do?

Regarding the terminology - that comes with time and exposure. Same with any lingo in any field. The first time you come across "contango" and "carry" or "backwardation" and "inversion", it'll never occur to you that each pair of terms mean the same thing.

So you don't know what a double is. Any beginner book or programming site will explain what it is in the first chapter or two. Or, like everything else nowadays, whatever lingo is stumping you can be found in Wikipedia or Google.

The definition of bool will come later. In C, it's just a redefinition of an integer with 1 of 2 possible answers - True or False / 0 or 1. In C++, it's now it's own data type like char, int, long, double, float, etc.

Algebra at its core is just basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division. The initial difference is you take a known element, and replace it with an unknown element such as "x", and then solve for the unknown - "x" in this case.

2 + 2 = 4 basic math
x + 2 = 4 algebra - solve for x

8 - 3 = 5 basic
x - 3 = 5 algebra

9 * 5 = 45 basic
9x = 45 algebra

24 / 2 = 12 basic
x / 2 = 12 algebra

Algebra gets much more complicated after this, but the above comprises the first 2-3 chapters/modules in any Algebra class.
 
Get a beginners game programming in c#. This way you can get a jump start view into how to use libraries and see solid examples of programming . It's a fun, goal-oriented learning.
 
Quote from pennystocker:

Get a beginners game programming in c#. This way you can get a jump start view into how to use libraries and see solid examples of programming . It's a fun, goal-oriented learning.
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I seonc that. Forget missing ediucation - unless your school left you incompetent for simple maths (1+1=2) and logic (if A and B then C) you have all you need.

The rest is learning and doing. Read a beeginner book, then move towards reading the documentation. Front to end.
 
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