completely lost.

[kingslovelua]

Is it normal to feel completely lost when reading the first 2 chapters of a program language book. I'm reading the Pil book and it's throwing words at me like i should know what it means i thought the pil book was for beginners. i'll keep reading but i just wanted to ask if anyone felt this way at first.

[Robin]

Hell yeah. I started programming when I was 12. The first book on programming I read was "making games in Flash for children". The second book on programming I got my hands on was something about QBASIC. Some parts were completely lost on me. The third book was about C++. I did not understand half of it. Revisiting them now, they all seem obvious.

Programming is hard.

It will get easier.

[GijsB]

I learned programming by looking at programs, maybe it works for you too?

[kingslovelua]

Hell yeah. I started programming when I was 12. The first book on programming I read was "making games in Flash for children". The second book on programming I got my hands on was something about QBASIC. Some parts were completely lost on me. The third book was about C++. I did not understand half of it. Revisiting them now, they all seem obvious.

Programming is hard.

It will get easier.

man you cracked open a programming at the age of 12 gosh that's how young billionaires are made. But I found out I wanted to program when talking a true basic class my senior year of high and now that I'm in college i'm just playing around and taking primary classes so I would like to teach my self. so far it's been a fail, i was getting the hang of c# but my pc is to old lol and now im on lua.

[kingslovelua]

I learned programming by looking at programs, maybe it works for you too?

yeah my friend keep on telling me that, I wanted to know how do you open up a .love in the editor i know some poeple in the project/ demo threads post up there source cod but the ones i want to look at dont. is there some way to convert it back to it's source code so i can look in side it.

[nevon]

I learned programming by looking at programs, maybe it works for you too?

yeah my friend keep on telling me that, I wanted to know how do you open up a .love in the editor i know some poeple in the project/ demo threads post up there source cod but the ones i want to look at dont. is there some way to convert it back to it's source code so i can look in side it.

.love files are just renamed zip archives. Open them up using whatever archive manager you use, and the source code is right there.

[kingslovelua]

I learned programming by looking at programs, maybe it works for you too?

yeah my friend keep on telling me that, I wanted to know how do you open up a .love in the editor i know some poeple in the project/ demo threads post up there source cod but the ones i want to look at dont. is there some way to convert it back to it's source code so i can look in side it.

.love files are just renamed zip archives. Open them up using whatever archive manager you use, and the source code is right there.[/quot]

thanks it's opened up like it owned me money

[BlackBulletIV]

Yeah, what Robin said. I started at 13 (although I can't say that I'm much older now; closing in on 15 to be exact) with ActionScript (Flash), and although I picked up many simple things quickly, I didn't have much of a clue compared to now. But yeah, the more you practice the more everything sets in.

Also, in my opinion, PIL is not for beginners to programming. From what I can see, it's expecting at least some basic experience with programming and the like. That's not to say beginners can't learn from it, but it'll be a lot harder.

[Ensayia]

PIL only shows you how to properly use Lua functions, it doesn't teach you all of the necessary things to program anything. In fact you might say it doesn't teach you to program at all, it's not really a tutorial but a reference.

Start tinkering and looking at other LOVE projects. Take one you like and make a few changes and see what happens, refer to the LOVE wiki and PIL to help make changes with proper syntax. Use cause and effect to understand how your changes affect the program and you will begin to pick up on how things work together.

When you start doing you will start learning.

[kraftman]

PIL only shows you how to properly use Lua functions, it doesn't teach you all of the necessary things to program anything. In fact you might say it doesn't teach you to program at all, it's not really a tutorial but a reference.

Start tinkering and looking at other LOVE projects. Take one you like and make a few changes and see what happens, refer to the LOVE wiki and PIL to help make changes with proper syntax. Use cause and effect to understand how your changes affect the program and you will begin to pick up on how things work together.

When you start doing you will start learning.

I disagree. The reference is more of a reference.

PiL describes the language and how to use it, with context and examples: It may be a little tough to read, but looking at other example code should reinforce it rather than replace it, as the overall quality of your code will be much better if you actually understand why you're doing something rather than just "that's how they did it."