What option worked BEST for you?

Hey Hey!
I have finally regained the motivation to learn my first programming language; C++ (not including html).
I see a giant range of sources arraying from books, ebooks, youtube tutorials, online courses, and physical courses.
For me personally I can't imagine learning such complex material out of a book so here is where advice is needed.

For YOU, what worked the best in learning programming. I want to know what taught you in a way that you weren't simply copying what someone told you what to do, but actually began to understand the whys and hows.

I know everyone will be different, but what do you guys think?

EDIT: I am willing to learn from a book if it is truly the best way, just hoping that there are other weapons of choice..
also please move thread to C++ section?

Ciao! xx

Personally for me just googling worked. I defined my goals then divided them into smaller tasks I needed to complete. Then I researched how these tasks could be done. If I needed a specific function or library I browsed documentation for it. Of course reading a book would be great, but due to my lack of time and the fact that porgramming is just a little hobby for me I haven't.

One of the most important things for me is to apply my newly gained knowledge in practice. That way I could totally understand what I'm doing and how it works. Just reading a book or an article without trying to replicate what was written in code seems to be ineffective to me.

I took a class on it at college. If your teacher is good, this is hands down the best way. You get to do exercises that point out strengths and weaknesses of the language. On top of that, you have a CS professor that has probably been using the language for 15 years; being able to ask him questions on the fly is invaluable. You end up putting a lot more effort into your programs when they are graded too.

Edit: Every person learns differently. People will claim that books are better than youtube videos or that-as in my case- a course is the way to go. Take these suggestions lightly because the only way you will find out is by taking the plunge and starting something.

thanks for the responses so far, keep them coming! Greatly appreciated

Doubt you'd remember me. I used to go by the name Kenshin13.

Anyways, I learnt C at 11. Here's how I did it:

Firstly, I allocated 2-3 days of free time to spend reading the a book I downloaded. ( Sam's Teach Yourself C in 21 Days ). So every day I'd end up reading about 7 chapters. Since I read rather quickly ( Even at 11 ) it really was no big deal. I'd obviously had to re-read things to get a firm understanding of how the language worked and grasp basic programming concepts.

Next would be the code examples in each chapter. I'd obviously just ( As you said ) C&P them into my compiler, compile them and checked if they worked. Now the part that differs from most people is where I take the self initiative and did extra example.

Assume the following example was to show you to add 3 numbers together using a for loop:

Code:

int Addnums(int* a){ int result = 0; for( int i=0; i<3; i++ ){ result = *a; a++; } return result; }

After doing that I'd then go change up the algorithm a bit. Why not make it add 30 numbers and give the maximum and minimum?
That's basically what happened for each chapter. In addition to this, the end of each chapter usually has exercises to do. Obviously I'd do them applying the same concept.

After reading the book, I'd had now attained basic knowledge of the language. Since I only use Windows OSs, I decided to focus on WinAPI next. Same concept applied except now google came into play. MSDN has a large collection of useful information for developers which came of great use to me.

Whatever I found curious, I'd google some sources and work out how it works then try to implement my own. I failed alot of times but once I got the hang of it, it became second nature.

Thus leading me where I am today. Making malware and game haxx
The same concept can be used with any programming language.

Here's some basic downfalls and pluses of various languages I've learned over the course of 9 years:
C Advantages:
- A very early and stable language.
- Cross-platform compatible.
- Easy ( IMO ) to understand.
- It's native to all OSs so it doesn't need anything ( Eg. JVM ) to run.
- Much harder to decompile and reverse engineer your applications than eg. NET based apps
- Minimal libraries. ( Eg. no std::cout or what have you )

C Disadvantages:
- No object-orientation support ( Structure pointers to functions are but no public/private methods, class inheritance, polymorphic functions etc. )
- Sources can get extremely complex depending on how large a program you're making
- No memory management etc. You need to do all this manually.

C++ Advantages:
- Extended version of C thus learning it is 75% easier if you already know C.
- Has object orientation support.
- Introduces many new features ( Templates, lambda functions, etc. )
- More libraries included than C.

C++ Disadvantages:
- Hard to learn if you have no programming background ( Especially with the newer generations ( C++x13 etc. ) )
- Much more complicated to debug these applications when using newer-non C functions

C# Advantages:
- Similar to C so same concept applies as C++ ( Easy to learn )
- Managed language so debugging is quite simple.
- Many libraries are included with it which makes your tasks easier to write
- GUI creator using Visual Studio making GUI based applications easy to write.

C# Disadvantages:
- Only Windows OS's. Linux is supported minimally.
- Requires a machine with the specified .NET platform installed depending what you compiled your program with
- Easy to decompile and reverse the source due to the nature of .NET's IL language ( Many obfuscators exist though )
- Slower due to VM running
- No native WinAPI support. You need to perform a manual Platform Invocation ( PInvoke ) to use them.

VB Advantages:
- Same as C#'s
- Syntax is much easier and differs a lot from C-based languages however.
- Quite similar to the original BASIC language.

VB Disadvantages:
- Same as C#'s.

Java Advantages:
- Object oriented support
- Class inheritance, polymorphism etc.
- Cross platform
- Easy C-like syntax

Java Disadvantages:
- Requires the machine to have Java Virtual Machine ( JVM ) installed to run applications
- Slower than other native languages due to the need to interpret instructions prior to execution ( JIT execution )
- No native WinAPI support.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Hitokiri~

Of course I remember you!
Thanks so much for such a detailed guide, practically convinced me to learn from a book.
As for which book to learn, I understand you did the learn c in 21 days, but I am 18 years old, would u perhaps recommend a more complex one?
I see a few recommendations for : McGraw Hill - C++ The Complete Reference, what would you think?

Thanks again for all the effort, means a lot xx

Tbh, the book wasn't meant for 11 year olds anyway.

For C, I'd recommend you learn from the creators themselves.
They wrote this book and will always be the best due to the fact that...well the made the language. Who would know it better than them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

For C++, again I'd recommend you learn from the creator himself:
http://www.stroustrup.com/4th.html

I never actually read a C#/VB book to learn them. I just happened to stumble across enough sources to figure out how to use the language without anyone's help.

Originally Posted by Hitokiri~

Thanks again! I can even head down to the local bookshop and see if they got any programming for dummies books (highly doubt it)
Thanks!

What option worked BEST for you?

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