Hey, I want to start programming bots and such. So I was wondering, whats THE FIRST thing I should do? I know nothing about programming. Should I read some books on it first? If so list some good titles please. Thanks.

[quote author=Dinin link=board=17;threadid=7431;start=0#msg67069 date=1088118986]So I was wondering, whats THE FIRST thing I should do? I know nothing about programming. Should I read some books on it first?
[/quote]
You answered your own question!

Now give us the language you want to learn, and we'll list some good titles for that language.

I wanna start with an easier language and work my way up the big boys. Would that be like starting with Visual Basic and moving up to like C/C++?

I would *not* recommend starting with Visual Basic. It's a bad habit. And it makes it harder to move onto a different language.

I'd recommend C/C++ tutorials for you. Go here and searching for 'C++ Tutorials'

It really depends on what you want to learn for, fun or career or other(?). If you chose the first one, and you have no desire to make anything besides a Battle.net bot, VB might not be a bad choice. If you want to do something serious, I think you should read a beginners tutorial on C/C++ now, and if you feel up to it just stick with it and bypass VB altogether.

On the other hand there are many other languages as well. I like Java, but it and C# are other good ones that you might consider learning. If you are going to go with VB, I recommend VB.NET mainly because it is object oriented.

Anyways, that’s just my two cents. Read up on those languages, or the multitude of other ones, and pick the one that is best for you.

HTH

[quote author=Dinin link=board=17;threadid=7431;start=0#msg67077 date=1088119880]
I wanna start with an easier language and work my way up the big boys. Would that be like starting with Visual Basic and moving up to like C/C++?
[/quote]
If you want to start with the simple stuff and then move on to the more complicated languages then yes you should learn visual basic first.

I would go with Java or C# first. Both have practical application to other, non-UI uses, such as Web development (ASP.NET and Java Servlets). They're fairly similar, and it mostly seems that C# is a superset of Java, so if you learn one, it's fairly easy to learn the other. If you learn C#, it's easy to translate to VB .NET (because of the same class library). C# also encourages learning C/C++ at some rudimentary level.

If you do go with C#, I would recommend C# and the .NET Platform. It's a little pricey, but hands-down, one of the best books for beginners and experienced programmers alike.

I think if you wanted to make a bot you should learn vb... its not hard and its fun!

[quote author=Kk)Blaze(kK link=board=17;threadid=7431;start=0#msg67155 date=1088183386]
I think if you wanted to make a bot you should learn vb... its not hard and fun!
[/quote]

I agree -- it is neither hard nor fun! :P

VB encourages bad programming practices if used incorrectly (like many newbs do). It would be better IMHO to go with a C-based language, or maybe even Ada.

I found C hard to learn so I started learning vb and I found it easy enough to continue... (Its the language barrier for me...)

I was reading a book on VB and then I thought about learning C++ so I found this online tutorial and I decided to learn them both at the same time. Hope it works out.