Talk about anything

duane

Programming is a lot like filling out tax forms. There's some simple math involved. You're encouraged to do things the "right" way, but it can be very rewarding to be innovative... unless you screw up. And, most of it is boilerplate that shouldn't be necessary, but you're dealing with a big, dumb machine, so you have to fill it in.

cybereality

And, like filing your taxes, all you have to do is read the documentation and follow the directions.

cybereality

Nerdzmasterz Another factor is to decide what programming language you want to learn

Programming languages are for humans, not computers. This is another misunderstanding. The computer only understands binary, but there is almost no human that can write anything even mildly complex in binary. So the programming language is for us to understand. So pick the one you are most comfortable with. It also depends what you are doing. The language to write a shell script, or a GUI app, or a 3D game, or browser plug-in, will obviously be different. But it ultimately doesn't matter. I just pick the best tool for the job. As I've been coding for so long, I can start a project in a language I've never seen before and it's not an issue. I already have the program designed in my head, so learning the syntax for a new language can be done in like 2 or 3 days.

Pixophir

cybereality

I think this post was underappreciated. Formal languages are for humans, and you choose one depending on what you want to accomplish and what the environment demands.

Example: just like it makes no sense to go to East Africa with a Japanese spell book, one won't approach Linux systems programming with C#, not ony because it has a garbage collector (sticktongue) but also because you'd expose a free/libre OS to MS's grace of licenzing. That'll never pass the maintainers. You want the language the OS is written in.

Interrupt me if I talk nonsense, for Godot, it's either GDScript (or C# for the guys who are used to Unity) and C++ (or C, Rust, ...) for the low level stuff.

As a hobbyist one only learns a language by actuaoly using it, making "all the mistakes waiting to be made" (Tartakover).

Happy hacking :-)

Nerdzmasterz

Another nice thing about coding is that the basics will pretty much be the same for each language, just with different syntaxes. For python, Hello World is print("Hello, World!"). For C#, console.WriteLine("Hello World!"), and C++ is cout << "Hello World!" << endl;.

Bimbam

Nerdzmasterz Another nice thing about coding is that the basics will pretty much be the same for each language, just with different syntaxes. For python, Hello World is print("Hello, World!"). For C#, console.WriteLine("Hello World!"), and C++ is cout << "Hello World!" << endl;.

Don't think this is a great example, as the first two are using pre-existing functions to print console output, while the last introduces the concept of streaming operators with the potential prerequisite knowledge of overloading.

C++ just never easy.

Your point is largely true though for most high level languages which abstract a lot of the fluff.

cybereality

Well, printf() (from C) still works in C++, and, surprisingly, in Objective-C as well.

Nerdzmasterz

I never said C++ was easy. I still struggle with it. 😖

Okay, I will admit it- I don't use C++. I like its power, but I don't have the time or desire anymore to understand it.

Erich_L

Nerdzmasterz I like C++ because it's explicit about all the things that is implicit in scripting languages. A lot of times while I'm learning C++ I'll go "ah, yes... of course of course this exists and that's how x works." Also, I've got to say, the more I learn unreal the more I'm impressed with Godot's editor. It's just.... so well done!

cybereality

Actually, my new plug-in, Godot Space Mouse, was the first thing I ever wrote in C. I've spent a lot of time in C++, and there are a lot of similarities (C code is valid C++ code), but actually C is kind of nice. I think they made C++ too complex for no good reason.

DaveTheCoder

cybereality I think they made C++ too complex for no good reason.

The original concept of C++ was "C with classes". It's interesting how much complexity that one change caused.

Nerdzmasterz

Excellent! Like I said, though, it's just not for me. It's processing speed is incredible, which would be the only reason I might try it ever again. I've gone down the road of studying it several times to absolutely no avail.

Pixophir

Nerdzmasterz

If C++ is not your thing but you ever need to do low level programming, have a look at Rust. It is quite the contrary, doesn't trust the programmer at all and thus forces a discipline that C++ (or even more so C) doesn't.

Which one can like, or not :-)

Edit: I couldn't get Unreal 4 to run properly on Debian Linux. Got it downloaded (a hulk of a download) anbd compiled and it started, but every single step cost minutes, and I couldn't get an IDE integrated which is pretty much a prerequisite to be able to make use of the api. There was no help, though others reported similar problems.

cybereality

Yeah, the Unreal editor is pretty bad from a UI standpoint. I mean UE5 is an improvement in the design, but the workflow is similar. Like really common things like getting a reference to an object in Blueprints are not clear. Can't remember the exact flow, but you have to select the object in one window, switch windows, and then press a specific button. Like this is possibly the most common thing you will do when making a game and it doesn't make any sense.

Unity used to be good, when it first came out. But they've been adding stuff non-stop, new menus, options, buttons, but not removing the old stuff, or doing a complete refactor. It's really messy. Yeah, it works, and it's better than Unreal, but there are just way to many menus.

Nerdzmasterz

The closest thing I had to an Unreal project:

cybereality

Yeah, supposedly Unreal can work on Linux, but the support is really bad. I never got it working, but I did some research when I was looking into it and gave up. Even the people that got it working, there are a lot of features missing, like the asset store. It's even worse on UE5 because most of the new rendering features only work on Windows. I'm kind of done with that. I mean, I still have a Windows 11 rig and a MacBook, but I don't feel like supporting companies that release stuff that doesn't work and don't care about users.

Nerdzmasterz

This project above, I would still love to finish- but not in Unreal. The assets are Deckagon, if I remember correctly, but I'm not in love with them and can have them replaced if I find something that looks as good. The effects, however- god rays, glows, blooms and such- How would one emulate all that? You can't see the god rays from here, they're behind this scene.

PS: This project is an old Victorian era English detective story I was working on. It starts in 1887. Note the importance of the date, as something big happened a year later...

Pixophir

Don't know god rays, but I recommend "Real Time Rendering" as a resource for all things, well, real time rendering. Not the very fancy ultimate latest stuff the high end engines implement, but we don't have the billion dollar budgets anyway :-)
https://www.realtimerendering.com/
There's a new edition in the making, but delayed.
Some other resources that may be of interest, if not already known:
https://www.pbr-book.org/3ed-2018/contents
Dabbling with path tracing "in one weekend":
https://raytracing.github.io/
To get into graphics programming before Vulkan:
https://learnopengl.com/
Grab the "Red Book":
http://www.opengl-redbook.com/
for OpenGL 4.5. The knowledge is not in vain, but a prerequisite I'd say for Vulkan.
There's also the Blue Book, called the OpenGL Superbible, latest edition.

For Vulkan, a starter:
https://vulkan-tutorial.com/
going on:
https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan
and:
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Samples

Some of these are real hands-on, you code after someone else. Maybe you make friends with C++, then ;-)

Can't recommend Vulkan books, they are all piffle, well maybe the "Vulkan Cookbook" by Lepinsky or so ...

Kojack

C++ is my natural environment, that's where I feel comfortable. But then again I've been using it for 27 years, and teaching it professionally for 20 years. 🙂
(It wasn't my first language by a long shot, just the one I settled on and stuck with)

cybereality

Kojack But then again I've been using it for 27 years, and teaching it professionally for 20 years.

Yeah, I was cursing Apple struggling to get my plug-in compiling on Mac, but then I remembered I have like 15 years of experience with C++ on Windows, and 5 years on Linux, and literally zero for Mac, so it's probably not any different.

Nerdzmasterz

I guess I removed the god rays, but here's another shot, this time with the main character. You may not realize the rain in the background.

As I said, it almost got finished- there is no real background here, just a rainy sky at this point.

cybereality

I coded a basic Vulkan hobby engine myself, without any experience in OpenGL, so it can be done. However, I had worked with DirectX for about 5 years at that point. Starting with DirectX 9 (not too serious) and then I spent a lot of time with DirectX 11 and built an engine, and later half ported it to DirectX 12. And DirectX 12 and Vulkan are very similar, so I found Vulkan to be straight forward at that point. I only did some GL later when I started working with WebGL.

If you want to get into graphics programming, I would highly recommend you start with WebGL. You still learn the basics of the pipeline, but the API is very streamlined and easy, with none of the legacy garbage, and you can get things running in a weekend without dealing with all sorts of compiler/linker issues you will have if you've never used C++.

Just do the tutorials on this page. They can be done in one day, and you will have something to show and actually learn something. If you start with Vulkan, it can take at least a week before you even see anything on the screen.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebGL_API/Tutorial

This was the demo I worked on in WebGL. Never really got that far, and I ended up finding Godot and the WebGL support was great, so I stopped working on the project. I think I spent a few months on this. Most of it is simple stuff, but the ball in the middle uses a spherical harmonics shader I wrote (mostly ported from open source code) and the reflection was a shader I created (not based on anything).

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