AmigaOS 4 Unofficial Developers FAQ

[Kent]

At the moment I am busy wit programming something for the currentOS/OS4. But playing around with DE is fun.

Cool.  That's one area I never really got into (developing for the AmigaOS) that I really tried but gave up due to frustration in the documentation and the massive clutter of an SDK in the DevCD2.1.  I'm hoping there will be better implementations of the ExecSG so that I can look into that area of programming again.  I have SAS/C 6.55 but may look into StormC when the A1 is finally released.  Personally I can't wait until OS4.2 with the AmigaDE sandbox... at that point I'll really have a blast with my bedroom coder tactics!

Code tight, code small, code clean... that's my moto.

:pint:

[Kay]

>What's your experience in computer programming?

Tricky question, any metrics I could use? Guess not...I did get an A in basic
Java programming at the university, and I have progressed a bit since then.
That doesn't make me a good programmer in real-life, though, but at least it
indicates that I have a half-decent decent understanding of the semantics.
Other than that I've coded a little bit in E and before that (many, many years
ago), in Dragon Basic. My C experience is limited to making a few tiny progs
with StormC.

Kay

[Kent]

I'd recommend two books if that's your current state.  One of them would be focusing heavily on the fundamentals with the second one focusing on programming tactics in C++.  There are things you can do in C++ that are a nightmare to do in Java but at the same time there are some small differences that may help you learn one programming language over another quite fast.  Stick with the command line for a while until you get a good solid working of the basics and understand the creation and destruction of pointers well enough to get into GUI development, then start looking outside the box.

My rough experience:  numerous years of Commadore64 Basic (wrote my own yatzee game even), 5+ years of ARexx as well as RexxC, a year of Pascal, 2 years of Java, and 2 years of C/C++ (off and on).  There are others but that's the important ones in a nutshell (VisualBasic isn't important in my book).  What has come of my programming experience... nothing I'd want to release, hopefully that will change in due time.

:pint:

[Kay]

> I'd recommend two books if that's your current state. (snip)

All right, thanks for the advice, I'll follow up on that one. I'll go looking for books as soon as I finish my last exam. My miggy and me will be separated for the duration of the summer, but I'll keep myself busy reading and laying out architectures for future projects. I might grab myself a book on general programming patterns while I'm at it. Time to get serious! :-)

Kay