I’ve added a dedicated page for the campus visualization project I’d previously mentioned. A few people have mentioned interest in it. If you’re interested in it you should bookmark that page and check back as further updates won’t be posted on this blog (the only exception being an announcement of the finishing of the project.
If you’re on CGSociety, feel free to stop by the sister thread there.
I’ve recently been considering how I would start off programming if I were someone coming into the field right now. It’s a bit of overload once you really take a look out there to see what you can do. C#, Java, C++, Visual Basic, Python, JavaScript, or Perl? Windows, Linux, Mac or mobile? Applications, games or the in-between? There really is no limit to what you can do these day. So where should you start?
Well, first of all, I’d like to say that I’m going to be making some very general statements here. They may work for you, they may not, although I hope more of the former.
I’d like to say that the most primal thing you should learn about programming is how to program, more than how to program in X. The best thing for you is to jump in and learn the fundamentals of what programming is. You should learn variables, functions and IO. Once you’ve got strong skills in that area move on to more complicated things such as Object Oriented Programming and learning to use frameworks and design patterns.
Languages of first choice: Ruby or Python. Really, these two languages are the easiest to master quickly as the syntax is very simple. Yet, they have some very powerful features when you begin to go into advanced stuff. Both have applications on the desktop and on the web.
After that I would move on to languages that are more strongly typed such as C++, C#, Java or Visual Basic. Visual Basic will feel familiar if you’ve programmed Python or Ruby. Java and C# are very close cousins as far as syntax and both have similar language concepts to C++. I have to say, though C++ is a very popular language it is also the most abused language. You really have to know what you’re doing. Also consider that C# and Visual Basic are almost exclusively Microsoft platform languages. All the other languages mentioned thus far are cross-platform. That said, Java is probably your best choice.
So, to recap, focus on either Python or Ruby. After that move on to Java. After that, branch out in every direction you can!
I have to admit for a steadfast love of RSS. Without it I no doubt would spend hours each day combing sites for news - well, I still do to a degree. I have to say that checking RSS feeds is without a doubt an addictive behavior. So who wants to start up a support group? RSSers Anonymous anyone?
At any rate I have to say that at least 70% of the items that drop in my aggregator of choice are complete garbage, clones of other posts, posts about posts I’ve already aggregated, or some other mundane category of blog post that I generally won’t bat an eye at.
Of course, I should note that at least 30%-40% of my incoming items are from a couple of aggregator themselves. Would probably do me some good to weed those out at some point. Of course I don’t really have the time, I have blog posts to read!
Things have been quite busy lately. My last semester at college starts in a few weeks but I’ve already begun my final internship. Between coding ActionScript 40 hours a week, a 20 hour part time job in the evenings, plus one evening class and a slew of other projects, I really wish I had more time every day to do a few extra things. Hopefully this craziness will force me into really scheduling things, but so far I’ve just been running back and forth trying to get what I can get done when I can get to it.
Today I’m starting a pretty big visualization project for my college. I’m creating a large, photo-realistic, 3d visualization of the entire campus for the school’s website. I have to go around today and photograph around 70 buildings from all sides so I can get a really good idea how the buildings look. Probably going to be about 3 hours of photographing. Then I can really begin the project. I will, of course, post some progress images on here when I have the time. I will be using Autodesk’s Maya for the 3D visualization progress as well as Photoshop.
