Please Help (positive help only)

[Subliminal-enthusiast]

hello everyone been learning c sharp for a while and because of my pride I'm not as far as I would have hoped. Really need some help, been creating s simple program of a guessing game and have done fairly well. Although, I still feel I'm not efficient enough in the language. At the moment I need a mentor or some knowledge to help me further my studies and goals. At the moment what I need is a deeper understanding of "Programming" itself, and fix the way I view c sharp. I feel if this isn't done I will never have a advanced grasp on the concept of creating programs as such. My main issue that hinders me is the fact that every time I make progress or lack of I feel like I'm playing a video game and dont fully understand the controls. I understand this may be confusing to some but hopefully theres some POSITIVE and helpful knowledge that can help me return on the track of learning. Simply out I need help learning.

 

[jmcilhinney]

I would not be surprised to find that you don't consider the following to be positive help but it is, because learning how to post a good question properly will increase your chances of getting the help you want.

1. Make sure that the title of your thread is descriptive of the issue. Titles like "Please Help" are all but useless because everyone who posts wants help so such a title is as good as no help at all.
2. What others choose to post in reply to your thread is up to them, within the rules of the forum. It's not for you to tell people what they can and can't post and "positive help" is a very subjective term anyway. If someone one makes a reply that you don't find helpful then you're free to ignore it but don;t make the mistake that many people do and assume that criticism is inherently not helpful. If you want the best chance of receiving help then you should want to post the best questions you can so, if you're not doing that, you should want to hear about it so you can improve.
3. Don't post duplicate threads. Choose the forum that best correlates to the subject of your question and post only there and only once. If you later decide that you have posted to the wrong forum, use the Report link under your post to send a message to the moderators and ask them to move your post. One thread per topic and one topic per thread helps keep the site orderly and thus most usable for everyone. I have deleted your other thread on this subject.

As for your request, I think you'll find it hard to find an individual to specifically act as a mentor. I think that most people will be like me in that they are happy to help anyone if and when they can but aren't prepared to limit themselves to a specific individual on that person's schedule. My best advice to you would be to find some useful resources and work your way through them, asking specific questions here and elsewhere as they arise.

I don't have anything to offer on the generalities of programming without doing a web search that you do for yourself, but I would suggest that it would be worth your while to follow the tutorial link in my signature below for a primer in C#. Depending on how far you have come so far, some of what it contains will be revision but, if you're struggling, some will undoubtedly be helpful. Again, you can ask specific questions along the way.

Once you've completed that tutorial, you will hopefully have an idea of specific areas you want more information in, e.g. data access is something pretty much all developers need to know these days. With a grounding in the basics, you will have a better idea of what keywords to search for to find the resources you need to gain that knowledge.

 

[Subliminal-enthusiast]

I would not be surprised to find that you don't consider the following to be positive help but it is, because learning how to post a good question properly will increase your chances of getting the help you want.

1. Make sure that the title of your thread is descriptive of the issue. Titles like "Please Help" are all but useless because everyone who posts wants help so such a title is as good as no help at all.
2. What others choose to post in reply to your thread is up to them, within the rules of the forum. It's not for you to tell people what they can and can't post and "positive help" is a very subjective term anyway. If someone one makes a reply that you don't find helpful then you're free to ignore it but don;t make the mistake that many people do and assume that criticism is inherently not helpful. If you want the best chance of receiving help then you should want to post the best questions you can so, if you're not doing that, you should want to hear about it so you can improve.
3. Don't post duplicate threads. Choose the forum that best correlates to the subject of your question and post only there and only once. If you later decide that you have posted to the wrong forum, use the Report link under your post to send a message to the moderators and ask them to move your post. One thread per topic and one topic per thread helps keep the site orderly and thus most usable for everyone. I have deleted your other thread on this subject.

As for your request, I think you'll find it hard to find an individual to specifically act as a mentor. I think that most people will be like me in that they are happy to help anyone if and when they can but aren't prepared to limit themselves to a specific individual on that person's schedule. My best advice to you would be to find some useful resources and work your way through them, asking specific questions here and elsewhere as they arise.

I don't have anything to offer on the generalities of programming without doing a web search that you do for yourself, but I would suggest that it would be worth your while to follow the tutorial link in my signature below for a primer in C#. Depending on how far you have come so far, some of what it contains will be revision but, if you're struggling, some will undoubtedly be helpful. Again, you can ask specific questions along the way.

Once you've completed that tutorial, you will hopefully have an idea of specific areas you want more information in, e.g. data access is something pretty much all developers need to know these days. With a grounding in the basics, you will have a better idea of what keywords to search for to find the resources you need to gain that knowledge.

Thank you.

 

[Skydiver]

As I understand your post above, learning the language itself is not the issue, but rather learning how to program is the issue. For better or for worse, current versions of C# is starting to have a steeper curve than earlier versions. Additionally, modern C# is becoming more and more like Java in the sense that it wants you to have a firm object oriented background, unlike earlier versions which would let you fudge things for a little while if you wanted to use the language inefficiently while learning.

Anyway, it sounds like your question boils down to "how do I learn to think like a programmer". Alas, I can't point you to any modern books. I hope some other forum users here can jump in and point to some current books. When I was learning to program, what really helped me learn how to think like a programmer was the series of books by Andrew Singer. I started off with Elementary Basic , as Chronicled by John H. Watson (Learning to Program Your Computer in Basic with Sherlock Holmes) . What was great about this author was that not only did he show how a BASIC program is constructed, but also did a lot of explanations of why you would pick particular constructs like branches, loops, subroutines, etc. It also taught things about elementary data structures, and how to organize code.

As an aside, I've been hearing that a lot of schools are shifting over to Python as their introduction to programming classes, and that they are having great success with it. Personally, I can see how that can be very successful because it lets students learn the basics of programming logic first, and doesn't saddle them with object oriented programming aspects until later. Maybe going up the learning curve of learning how to program in Python may be a better approach for you.

 

[Subliminal-enthusiast]

Thank you so much. You may be right, instead of me having issues with learning c# it may very well be that I'm having issues with programming fundamentals. I havent thought this. Up until now I thought my brain was inferior. It may be that i should learn to crawl before i walk. Thank you so much you gave me a different aspect of viewing things. In your opinion you think Python is the best language tp start off with? If you dont mind me asking what was the first language you learn? Also how long did it take for you to have a overall understanding?

 

[Skydiver]

Personally, I would recommend Python just because it lets you focus on the actual programming, less on the formalities of how to write a program.

I learned BASIC when I was 9. My dad showed me some simple commands on his Pocket TRS-80, and then I borrowed the manual that came with it and taught myself the rest over weekend. It was enough to get me the basics of the language. I made a few toy programs that did some sounds and animation, and also did some simple physics like a console based moon lander program. But as I mentioned above, the Andrew Singer books that I picked up the following year is what actually taught me how to break down a problem and solve it in a more structured and organized manner.

 

[NoUserHere]

I know this is an avenue somewhat unrelated but in order to know where i picked up logic I'll need to explain where I started. For me; some 20+ years ago, I started out with Electronics and my first book was Electronics Made Simple, and it was here that I learned how electrical components such as transistors, diodes, capacitors, and microchips worked. For me, this is where I learned logic, and where I began drawing my own diagrams of portable hand-held radios, transmitters, stereo encoders and amplifier diagrams as a hobby. This wasn't enough for me, and I wanted to know how all electrical components worked, especially intrigued with microchips, and so I recursively moved from Electronics and into computer programming, dipping and dabbling between the two. At the time, I was already designing websites as a hobby too; while trying to work out how that all worked... My enthusiasm grew exponentially in a variety of these fields, and I started studying how some components get programmed. In 2013 when arduino boards came out, I was instantly hooked writing my own code to micro-controllers, which helped me to expand my patterns on logical thinking. (You can buy a test project on ebay for $140 which will have components for you to build test projects and learn from).

I started working with websites when i was about 12 or so, I was always interested in server technology which is one of my main areas of expertise today. So I relate to Skydiver's posts re- python programming, as without this and a few other web based languages and action scripts, I may not have picked up C, Java, C# and C++, latest being VB.NET. And so, I would second python as a starting point if electronics are not your cup of tea. Alternatives are raspberry pi with a range of opensource python projects available to you online.

One of few recommended books you could also get are the collections on The Art of Computer Programming. Highly recommended read. My expertise was devised through my years as a radio broadcasting engineer, tuning up radio broadcasting equipment for radio stations across Ireland; this included working with transmitters, compressor/limiters and stereo encoders, and all this stemmed from the book Electronics Made Simple. And while this isn't a requirement to learning to code or becoming a better programmer, it was a requirement for me to better understand programming logic in the long run. Learning how circuit boards worked is what helped me with logic.

But it really depends on the type of learning curve you want to go on yourself; and how much you want to know on different subjects, and how much time you have to devote to it all... For me; I could never learn enough and always wanted to know more. It was the learning of Electronics that thought me the most about logic. I learned as I progressed into the fields of computer programming, and later; the programming of micro electronics such as arduino (in 2013) and pi boards that will teach you the most about logic. Have a read of Why should I care about electronics and programming. Electronics are a part of every day programming today, and it all boils down to how much you want to know, and where you'd prefer to jump in and get started. Electronics and programming are two totally different things. I would suggest you get some basic knowledge about analog and digital electronics including microprocessors. Keep in mind that in order to learn programming, its not required to learn the above, but in terms of logic, I think you will find it helpful when constructing your own code later on.

You will learn the basics from raspberry pi/arduino regarding declarations, variable types, iterations and so much more without getting into electronics extensively. As I said, you don't need to learn what I did, but you can skip a few chapters by getting a pi board and integrating python as a starting point to build on your skills. Logic comes with experience, so may I also suggest looking up tutorials to follow, and then when finished with those tutorials, look at how you can better adapt the code you learned and restructure and rewrite it to do the same thing, but better.

Hope this helps.