Newbie - Intro & Question

Good day all!

I'll introduce myself quickly, and hope I am not kicked to the community curb. I do not have programming experience, nor did I take any computer science courses in my post secondary education. I was an Accounting Graduate back in 1993 (never have done a stitch of Accounting since I've been in the workforce!), and am currently working in the Information Systems group of a utility company as a specialist who manages projects. Most of my projects are around upgrading vendor applications, or lifecycling end of life contact centre technologies.

Having no programming experience, is somewhat driving me nuts, as 99% of my the folks I work with are developers, creating complex applications to support our business.

My desire here, and hopefully Alice can assist, is to self-tech myself some of the basics so I have a better understanding and appreciation of the skillset you all here have at your disposal. I have the utmost respect for developers and really want to increase my knowledge.

I was driven here by Dr Paush's book.. at first to see if his request/desire to have Alice continue on in his absence was fulfilled. It's great to see a 3rd version in development (albeit it seems with some progress / resource challenges).

Questions:
I'm looking for someone to help kick start me here please...
- What should I be downloading to get me started? Alice 2.2? Alice 3 Beta?
- What about tutorials / textbooks / etc. What should I read first?
- Any other thoughts / suggestions for a newbie?

I look forward to playing in the sandbox, learning a new skill, and having an even higher appreciation for those of you with development skills.

Cheers,

[jediaction]

Alright. First of all, welcome to the community and i will be glad to help.

Answer 1: Alcie 2.2 is completed and has a complete system that you can learn for programming. Alice 3 Beta is not even close to completed and not many users know how to use it so stick with Alice 2.2.

Answer 2: Depends what you want to learn first. I have never took the text books but i know how to use Alice. If your looking on learning something like variable basics, then i made a tutorial or you can look at text books.

Answer 3: Well, its good just to know the basics of where all the functions are. I find it hard to explain all the functions to you right now and dont know where to start. Put out a list of thigns you want to know where they are. I will answer from there.

Hope i helped

Thanks for the welcome and the post.

I've d/l 2.2 and (if time permits) will get it installed at home and start playing this weekend. I guess my main point I was trying to make is that I'm really going into this 'blind' and was just looking for some advice on how to get myself started...

- are there built in tutorials to help me walk through the basics, or should I be d/l some tutorials or text files to help me through the learning process?
- Do I need to buy any of the books that are out there?

Again, you should assume I know nothing, but have a strong desire to learn. I just want to make sure I start my learning process off right... we all know what happens if you go into something unprepared... I'll probably get frustrated, and want to give up, without giving this personal challenge of mine a fair shot.

Thanks again!

Hey,

There are some tutorials in Alice when you start to help you cover the basics of how to work the program and after that I guess it's mostly playing around and testing your stuff.

About the books: I've never read those so I think you can do without, but if you feel more confortable with the text books, don't let me stop you :P

I don't think any of us can just explain 'all of programming/Alice' here right now, but this forum is to help eachother, so if you run into trouble anywhere, just ask and someone will come up and answer.

Lastly a bit of advice I got from a programmer who is helping me outside Alice: first be creative and then try to program that.

So he says you should first think of what you want to make (ie. game/movie) and then you think of what you want in it. When you've got that in your mind, then you get into Alice and try and see how you can make the program do what you want.

I've found that first doing this makes it easier to program, because you can look more specifically at what you want done. However, again: if you feel like just playing around, and testing random functions to see what they do, just do so and have fun

Originally Posted by bwlandu

Good day all!

I'll introduce myself quickly, and hope I am not kicked to the community curb. I do not have programming experience, nor did I take any computer science courses in my post secondary education. I was an Accounting Graduate back in 1993 (never have done a stitch of Accounting since I've been in the workforce!), and am currently working in the Information Systems group of a utility company as a specialist who manages projects. Most of my projects are around upgrading vendor applications, or lifecycling end of life contact centre technologies.

Having no programming experience, is somewhat driving me nuts, as 99% of my the folks I work with are developers, creating complex applications to support our business.

My desire here, and hopefully Alice can assist, is to self-tech myself some of the basics so I have a better understanding and appreciation of the skillset you all here have at your disposal. I have the utmost respect for developers and really want to increase my knowledge.

I was driven here by Dr Paush's book.. at first to see if his request/desire to have Alice continue on in his absence was fulfilled. It's great to see a 3rd version in development (albeit it seems with some progress / resource challenges).

Questions:
I'm looking for someone to help kick start me here please...
- What should I be downloading to get me started? Alice 2.2? Alice 3 Beta?
- What about tutorials / textbooks / etc. What should I read first?
- Any other thoughts / suggestions for a newbie?

I look forward to playing in the sandbox, learning a new skill, and having an even higher appreciation for those of you with development skills.

Cheers,

Thank God I'm not the pnly other one here who discovered alice by that book. Actually I think that book made my cry at one point. He was an aazing person living life to the fulliest in the face of sure death. But yaa Alice 2.2 It taught me all I knwo besides a litle bit of javascript. It turned out when I looked at the javascript I was wrinting character by character I understood it because the similarty with alice.

Originally Posted by King Gamer(gorit)

Thank God I'm not the pnly other one here who discovered alice by that book. Actually I think that book made my cry at one point. He was an aazing person living life to the fulliest in the face of sure death. But yaa Alice 2.2 It taught me all I knwo besides a litle bit of javascript. It turned out when I looked at the javascript I was wrinting character by character I understood it because the similarty with alice.

I'm sure there are a lot more ppl that heard of Alice the first time through his last lecture, either in book-form or on youtube. I'm in that club as well :P

[jediaction]

Originally Posted by bwlandu

Thanks for the welcome and the post.

I've d/l 2.2 and (if time permits) will get it installed at home and start playing this weekend. I guess my main point I was trying to make is that I'm really going into this 'blind' and was just looking for some advice on how to get myself started...

- are there built in tutorials to help me walk through the basics, or should I be d/l some tutorials or text files to help me through the learning process?
- Do I need to buy any of the books that are out there?

Again, you should assume I know nothing, but have a strong desire to learn. I just want to make sure I start my learning process off right... we all know what happens if you go into something unprepared... I'll probably get frustrated, and want to give up, without giving this personal challenge of mine a fair shot.

Thanks again!

Just like Nephtysis said; if you like using text books. Start with that and i believe you have to pay for them. With out text books and looking at games that someone on the community made is another way. I know how to use Alice very well and its all from the Community and my Cousin 4 years ago.