Finished a "teach yourself" book, what next?

[Jacob Oost]

Should I get some more general books, like "advanced self-teaching," or
can I start on specialized books like "Linux game programming?"

Any book recommendations ?
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[Jacob Oost]

Chris Croughton wrote:

A numboer of them use a "game engine", which is an interpreter. Do a
Google search for "infocom" and "frotz", I know there is C source for
that (for Linux and DJGPP among others). But the code is not very
readable as I recall. Somewhere there is code for the original
"Colossal Cave" adventure as well...

If it's not readable then screw it. If there's one thing I intend to do
as a programmer it is to make my code readable and easy to upgrade.
(I note your email address, Infocom were the people who did Zork among
others.)

Believe it or not, I only ever got into the graphical Zork games. I
liked the text adventures when I was younger, but now that I've played
so many LucasArts adventure games, it's frustrating to play an adventure
where you can die or make irreparable mistakes.
If you want to do 3D (or even 2D) "real world" type programs then
calculus is rather useful. In fact if you're interested in any
mathematical modelling of "real world" stuff I'd advise it, if only so
you know what other people are talking about!

My problem with math is I tend to quickly forget it after learning. I
took two calculus classes and now I can't do a simple derivative by hand
(though I remember some of the rules for doing it in your head).
Writing a raytracer (or interactive games for that matter) is more about
knowing 'tricks' or shortcuts and algorithms than about raw mathematics,
bacause the 'obvious' (to a mathematician) route generally takes ages.
At the very least, you'll need to know about things like Fast Fourier
Transforms and other numerical methods, which aren't likely to be
covered in normal math classes (below degree course level, anyway).

As computers get faster though, real-time ray-tracing and radiosity
(instead of gimmicks to imitate them) will be standard.
Which is all off topic here, because it's about algorithms rather than
which language they are written in. Some newsgroups which may be more
helpful:

comp.games.deve lopment.program ming.{misc,algo rithms}
comp.sources.ga mes

Chris C

Hold on, I just finished learning the preprocessor macros! I still
don't know anything about writing "real" programs. Unfortunately my
library is pretty slim on what they offer for programmers, and most of
the books I've seen in stores or have at home are just "this function
does this, and that function does that," with few source examples.

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[Jacob Oost]

Jonathan Burd wrote:

-----
1) Stay away from anything written by Herb Schildt.
There are innumerable errors in his books (even entire
chapters are wrong!). ("Teach Yourself..." Is that the
one written by the same clown?)

I have "Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours," by Tony Zhang. It was a basic
primer on the language, but not on actual software engineering,
organizing projects, style, etc.

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[Keith Thompson]

Jacob Oost <zo**@columbus. rr.com> writes:

Richard Bos wrote:

A few C++ and Java classes, that's it. I'm on C now and I've
forgotten most of what I learned about C++ and Java anyway (except
that I hated Java).

Have you read "The C Programming Language", 2nd edition, by Brian
Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie? It's _the_ book on C.
Richard

I'd like to get it if I can find it for cheap.

There are many resources on the net for finding cheap books.
(I'm afraid comp.lang.c isn't one of them.)

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keit h) ks***@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center <*> <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.

[Jason Wells]

Jacob Oost wrote:

Jason Wells wrote:

I'm a little worried that I might need to go take a calculus class when
I eventually get into 3D! I want to make my own raytracer.

Make that Linear Algebra(Which requires at least 1 calculus as a
prerequisite).

Actually I'm not in college or anything, I just have some books on
programming. I've learned algebra and calculus, but forgotten a lot of
it. I prefer to study at home rather than in a class room. I've
already learned more in a few weeks than I did in months of classes.

The algebra you have learned has very little to do with Linear
Algebra(Matrice s)... Maybe you could check out some of the math for
computer graphics books.
--
WWW: http://haywire.csuhayward.edu/~jwells2
spinmaster .______________ _______________ _______________ ___________.
@ |When you are right you cannot be too radical; |
gmail.com |when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. MLK|

[Richard Bos]

Jacob Oost <zo**@columbus. rr.com> wrote:

Richard Bos wrote:

A few C++ and Java classes, that's it. I'm on C now and I've forgotten
most of what I learned about C++ and Java anyway (except that I hated Java).

Have you read "The C Programming Language", 2nd edition, by Brian
Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie? It's _the_ book on C.

I'd like to get it if I can find it for cheap.

Get this one even if you can find it for the normal price. It's well
worth it.

Richard

[Mike Wahler]

"Jacob Oost" <zo**@columbus. rr.com> wrote in message
news:KS******** *********@fe2.c olumbus.rr.com. ..

Mike Wahler wrote:

Seriously, I could beat somebody to death with this book. But I suppose
I'll give it a try. If I get bored after the first one hundred pages
I'll switch to something else.

No offense intended, but that attitude makes me
question whether you have sufficient motivation
to learn to become a good programmer. A mere
hundred pages of a single book about a single
topic is an extremely small fraction of what you'd
need study. Especially if one of your goals is
something as complex as 3D graphics.

I have the sufficient motivation

Motivation implies that you're willing to exert
the necessary effort.
to become a good programmer in software
that interests me, which is mainly graphics. While I do want to learn
more advanced C stuff, I'm not sure I want to go through an 800 page
book on general Linux programming at this moment. What's the harm in
putting it off, especially if it is just "an extremely small fraction"
of what I need to study?

I gave my best advice, based upon thirty-five years of
my experiences learning about programming.

Take it or leave it. :-)

-Mike

[Jesse Meyer]

Jacob Oost <zo**@columbus. rr.com> wrote:

Should I get some more general books, like "advanced self-teaching," or
can I start on specialized books like "Linux game programming?"

Any book recommendations ?

I found _A_Book_on_C_ rather interesting, if a tad out of date
(last edition published in 1997, so no C99).

Others have recommened _C_Unleashed_, which is an excellent book
and I'm happy to own my copy.

OT: You want a good algorithm book.

PS: Try ebay and amazon.com for used books, the price is often
cheaper. K&R sells for $42.00 new (Amazon), but the lowest used
price is $24.95. Or try a public library system, if available in
your area. There are often services available at local libraries
to find and borrow books from remote libraries.

--
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is
not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they
are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them
as they fly overhead. -- RFC 1925

[Randy Howard]

In article <95************ *****@fe2.colum bus.rr.com>, zo**@columbus.r r.com
says...

Jonathan Burd wrote:

-----
1) Stay away from anything written by Herb Schildt.
There are innumerable errors in his books (even entire
chapters are wrong!). ("Teach Yourself..." Is that the
one written by the same clown?)

I have "Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours," by Tony Zhang. It was a basic
primer on the language, but not on actual software engineering,
organizing projects, style, etc.

Perhaps you will be fortunate enough to forget most of that one soon.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)

[Joe Wright]

Jacob Oost wrote:

Richard Bos wrote:

A few C++ and Java classes, that's it. I'm on C now and I've
forgotten most of what I learned about C++ and Java anyway (except
that I hated Java).

Have you read "The C Programming Language", 2nd edition, by Brian
Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie? It's _the_ book on C.

Richard

I'd like to get it if I can find it for cheap.

List price is cheap. It's about $40 anywhere you go.

--
Joe Wright mailto:jo****** **@comcast.net
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
--- Albert Einstein ---

[Albert van der Horst]

In article <41************ ***@news.indivi dual.net>,
Richard Bos <rl*@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:

Chris Croughton <ch***@keristor .net> wrote:

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:45:26 GMT, Jacob Oost
<zo**@columbus. rr.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the suggestions. I was thinking of writing a program to
> decode the cryptoquip (by counting the occurences of numbers and
> comparing them to a table of the most commonly-used letters in English),
> and then a text adventure engine (I have never seen the source code for
> a text adventure yet, I'm curious how they do it, I imagine some kind of
> multi-branching linked list).
A numboer of them use a "game engine", which is an interpreter. Do a
Google search for "infocom" and "frotz", I know there is C source for
that (for Linux and DJGPP among others). But the code is not very
readable as I recall. Somewhere there is code for the original
"Colossal Cave" adventure as well...

But not, originally, in C. Advent was written in Fortran. The original
Infocom games were written in ZIL, which was a kind of MDL, which was a
Lisp-like language. I've no idea what their 'terps were written in.

The original code in MDL is, as far as I can tell, still a trade
secret, after more than 25 years.
I have the code for what I know as dungeons, aka Zork on my site.

http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst/games.html

It is in fact a 1991 source intended for MSDOS, but after conversion
to Unix text files, it compiles perfectly on Linux, gcc.
It is a testament to the practical portability of C.
I didn't want to look into the source (I want to play it, and don't
want spoilers) but I didn't need to. So I don't know whether it is
a good idea to study it.

<SNIP>
Richard

--

Groetjes Albert
--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.