Trying to learn to program (Objective-C)

If you have absolutely no programming experience, you should start by taking a few beginning programming courses at your local community college (or any college for that matter).

You must have a good understanding of common algorithms, data structures and logic before you even think about learning Objective-C.

Like everything else, a solid foundation is essential.

It helps if you are the kind of person who is detail-oriented because it's all about the details when writing code.

Being a logical thinker to begin with is also a big plus.

Unless you are related to Sheldon Cooper, this isn't something that you can do in just a few months.

Okay thanks, I've found a Lynda.com course called Foundations of programming - Fundamentals which I'm going to follow up with Foundations of programming - Object Orientated Design.

Can anyone vouche for these courses? Are they a good place to start? My problem is there are no local courses available to me.

I believe those courses are ok.

There are few courses available anywhere; I've never found any near me.

I learned everything through experimentation; I do have a background in development so it was not that difficult.

Hello,

I'm currently almost done with my first iOS game. I'm just currently working on the new iPad Pro version. Prior to this game I had NO programming experience anywhere at all, never programmed, never did anything gaming related except enjoying playing videogames myself. Anyways, I am 100% self taught in programming of iOS apps. I NEVER read a programming book, I never took a programming course in school. I taught myself based on the tutorials on the internet and there are a LOT of them. Tutorials will teach you the basic concepts of the languages and then they'll teach you what the code means and how to properly execute the code needed. After that it is your job to put the pieces of the code together and learn to understand it by practicing coding yourself. I started by practicing code over and over again until I understood the concept and what the code translated to then I started by coding games that existed at the time to see if I can recreate them myself. After I was confident enough I started working on my own game a few months back.

If you want to learn Objective C, and like myself, you have no prior programming experience then Objective-C is a tough language to learn because it's not the beginnner language to start from. Start from learning C first. C is the first language your learn before moving onto Objective C. After you learn C, you can move onto Objective C and you will even see that 80% or so of the 2 languages are the same, so you should pick up OBJ-C within a week after learning C. Once you know one language, the other ones are easier to pick up, it's learning your first language that really is a tough experience, at least it was for me. GOOD LUCK!

I'd like to add that Objective C language is INSANELY detail oriented. You can't just code for your character to Move to the left side of screen. You have to code showing what is a left side? How much of a distance is a left side? Which direction is a left side? When does the character start moving? How far does the character move to the left side? What's the speed of the character moving to left side? What happens when character gets to left side? What is a stop? When does the character stop at the left side? How long does it to stop? From what difference does the character start to stop and end to stop and start to slow down and stop slowing down?

If you want to code your character to move to left side, you have to think about all those questions and code them into action or else your character won't move. So Objective C is very detail oriented and before you move any object, you must think about everything that requires for the movement of that object and you have to put that into code.

One free option to learn the programming basics is at codecademy.com. Couple that with Udemy, and you should be off and rolling.