I've started a new project while I learn C++ to post about what I've learnt, what problems I came across and how I went about them. It's my hope to help fellow beginners with the problems I face and to help them overcome them. I'm trying to explain things in layman's terms so that it's easier to understand, and I will be posting puzzles and exercises for people to work through. Hopefully, with enough interest, I'll invest in web hosting and provide a proper site where a community can develop of likeminded beginners.
I found this poem which describes how my problem feels.
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I am like a toolbox,
with all the tools I will ever need
lain gently and neatly in the box,
ready for me to use them.
The toolbox is translucent
so I can see them there.
This is fantastic advice, I have tried Euler in the past and struggled on the first question haha. I think when things pick-up from the basics of variables, classes, objects etc, that's where I start going wrong. I know about the mechanics of programming, it's using the tools to solve problems is where I go wrong.
That's just it! I understand that solution perfectly, it just doesn't seem to sink in/work for me. I've been doing 10 years worth of basics and still can't progress.
I realize that you cannot learn Mandarin over night, as with programming. However, surely after 10 years worth of basics, I should have progressed further than I have.
I have always considered that when I hit this point of frustration that I'm talking about. It feels like it's the only variable I've not taken into account.
I suppose the largest things I've done is a meme website in PHP which displays an image, forward and back, and a random button, and an upload script; all integrated into MySQL. A football game in Pascal which uses 1 2 3 as user input, and a goal keeper which generates 1 2 or 3, if the input is the same as the goal keeper, then the ball is saved, else you score. And I did a text based adventure game in Python.
I agree with this. I cannot explain why I want to. It has something that I've craved to do my entire life, I cannot put into words or explain why, the hunger I feel to code. I feel very drawn to it and it is extremely appealing. That is all I know!
I'm in the UK, and it's something that needs to be done today, I don't have time to order adapters. Also, like I said, I use the molex PSU, which is fine. The SATA is tempermental, hence why I'm not using it.
Thanks for the replies guys. I don't think they're quite what I'm looking for. I'd like the features of time tracking, just not paying a fee for it since it's not for business.
I made a start on your Learn C The Hard Way but after reading several comparisons I believe C++ is better to learn without learning C first. And I believe C isn't a very strong language.
Probably the latter. A friend of mine was sort of encouraging me with ideas and he bugged me to add a comments box to each image so people could add and read comments. I failed at that after days of attempting it. I also wanted titles above the images but couldn't integrate it into my admin script because how the script was setup was to iterate through the "uploaded" table of the database and display the results. Basically once things got a bit more complicated than just merely echoing images to the screen, I crashed and burned. This is the case with pretty much any language I use. I've made Space Invader clones with Python (using tutorials, understanding what was going on) but when it came to keeping scores, title screens and stuff, again I'd crash and burn. And today for instance, I've been reading up on C# and I've attempted to create Pong but I can't even get sprites to draw lol.
Well I sort of get 'writers block'. For example I set out learning PHP a few months ago and created a meme site which would store image locations in MySQL, pull them out in ascending order and have arrow buttons to flick between the images. A random button for an image at random, an upload script, a login script, and a crappy admin area. Doing all tha took me weeks of trail and error and a lot of copying other people's code then all of a sudden I hit a brick wall and couldn't progress. For a month or two I get a rush of enthusiasm and motivation, I start off great and start thinking logically in my everyday life and I start thinking about how something is coded; I even start thinking algorithms for everyday life. But then I just stop dead and can't progress; anything better than command line input/output apps just eludes me!