I'm currently a first year college student and I am majoring in Mechanical Engineering. While that is cool and all, I'm not sure if its what I want to do for the rest of my life. So I've been thinking about possibly switching into Comp Sci, maybe even with a specialization in Game Development. Unfortunately, I don't really have the time or money to waste and if I switch around majors its gonna take longer to graduate, obviously. So I was hoping to maybe get a head start to "test the waters" if you will and decide if I really like programming or not. I looked at the course requirements and it looks like the first comp sci class is intro to Java so I thought I would try and learn Java. I looked through the sticky and it didn't have much info about Java. I was wondering if anyone new of some good resources or had any recommendations on what I should do. Unfortunately I've always liked computers but I am fairly computer illiterate compared to a lot of people my age. I do however have some experience with python and quite enjoyed it. So yea any comments or suggestions are welcome because I really don't know where to start. Thanks.
Hello, here's a tutorial (I didn't use it) of Java compiled by the creators of Java. Good luck.
[url]http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/reallybigindex.html[/url]
Get into C++ if you want to get into game development.
But don't teach yourself if you're gonna do a course in it - you might well teach yourself bad habits. I personally like O'Reilly books, but would say that of all the languages that would put you off programing Java is probably it (other than something like brainfuck). Plus the bad habits thing also applies. I'd start off on C# if I were you - I would recommend O'Reilly's "Learning C#".
Or stick with python - I learnt python as my first language, and think it's great! I learnt from "Learning Python", but if you already know it you could do a few little projects (bank account software - withdrawls, deposits - keeping a log in a file/address book) on the command line, the move onto simple games with something like pyglet, desktop applications with wxPython or web applications with web.py/django, depending on what interests you.
That's my £0.02, at any rate!
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