)??im using is a 4 year old (The
original bondi blue) imac. its pretty
outdated but its all i got, anyhow, i want to
learn to program. so far the extent of my
"programing " knowledge come from
making usless applescripts and
occasinally looking at the insides of a
program with resedit. i dont know what C
C++ or pascal are, or what is needed to
work with them, any help on the subject
would be great. unfortunanttly tho im in
year 10 at school and have no money so
if anyone knows any sites with free
downloads of what might be helpfull i
would greatly appriciate it :) PS i have
looked at post like the one im writing for
tips but it is either over my level or
suggests a site to download stuff from
that didnt work for me. thanks :)

See if you can find a class about programming at your school. Most people - though not all - learn best through some sort of structured class, at least for the basics. If you can't find something at your school, check out the local community colleges.

p

year 10 in secondary school or high
school i am doing CSt (computer
studies) at the moment we are working
with dream weaver but i want to make
programs not web sites.
thanks anyway tho

Most reasonably large high schools have at least a basic intro programming class. I went to a pretty ghetto public high school (How ghetto? Well, let's put it this way - I know enough people I went to HS with who've done time, or are currently doing time, than I can count on one hand.) and we had one.

Check out the community college and/or community ed (adult ed) programs, like I suggested. Won't be free, but it won't be expensive either, and you'll get some good exposure to the language of your choice, since most places have classes in more than just the one programming language a high school usually offers.

p

I would suggest Visual Basic its a good
Language to start off with, and you can
get fantastic results from just knowing a
little, i tried a little C and C++ but i found
them rather difficult.

Gaaaaah.

Visual Basic is PC-only, for starters, and it tends to add a LOT of overhead for the simplest tasks.

RealBasic, which is similar and runs on a Mac, is awfully bloody expensive.

The biggest problem with both, however, is that neither one really teaches you how to program. The concepts of good coding, object-oriented design, and the like aren't something *any* BASIC compiler will ever teach you, and if you care about programming to any extent greater than just fooling around with it, those concepts will matter.

p

Yes, going to school and learning from a good teacher is best, but if you don't have that available locally you might get a used copy of something like "Teach yourself C in 24 hours". Go through the book, do the exercises, write a couple programs to see if you can do what you want to (like create a simple game). If you like programming and what to go further and learn to program well, there are some good books on programming style and philosophy. For something more interactive, some Universities offer online courses in programming style (I remember seeing one on the UC Berkeley Extension website a while ago.)