Student Seeking Advice

Plan from the top.

Documentation is a boring pain in the ass...but VITAL !

Write code in small chunks and test it.

Debug it now...you'll forget it later.

If I just stick this patch in here, that should fix it.... it will also screw up some apparently unrelated feature elsewhere.

Remember there are a finite number of tests to show that it does what it should...but an infinite number to show that it doesn't do what it shouldn't. So put in all the daft data... test test and test again...play at 'what if', find the dumbest person you can to try it out.

Hardware seldom works first time ... software never does.

Have fun

Del

Correct grammar?

As with everything else, you'd get better at it by doing it repeatedly. Not blindly or without feedback but with a constant attempt to improve.

Start small....but then move towards bigger things. There are tons of tutorials that could get you started. Complete one tutorial and then move on to the next. But keep moving and keep programming.

For the specifics, get started with 'C'. Its a very good language, though you may find it a little tough. But if you understand C properly you shouldn't have a problem with any other language.

Once you write the code, you own the code. If you don't know what that means, then try to debug someone else's code and you'll understand. You have to get inside his/her head, try to understand the way they think, then you might be able to figure out what is causing the bug. A few time I tried to debug someone else's code, it took me less time to write it from scratch, which is what I did.

So, follow Del's advice, Documentation is VITAL, even if you wrote the code a year ago, and you come back, without Documentation, you won't know what you did.

You should probably learn a teaching language for programming documentation and structure like Pascal, and something like Fortran for numerical analysis. Then for general application C is good to learn (though it is not meant to teach you the basics about programming). There are many programming languages that are based on C, and you can interpret something about how they operate just by knowing C. Specialize languages from that point depend on your specialty preference, since some languages are high level for specific specialties and others are lower level capable but not efficient for programming for some applications.

i don think that you should start using c or pascal in the beginning, start from the very basic languages.. then you'll get the feel of programming.. then only to go onto higher levels of programming languages..

by the way,practice more.. you need to practice practice.. try doing step by step..

then after u finish a small portion debug it first, u'll know where your errors are.. if u debug after u finish the whole program.. haha.. unless u r some pro.. then u'll have headaches trying to figure n identify your errors...

good luck and all the best.. important thing is to HAVE FUN^^

cheers!