Learning To Program

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Learning to program. I quite often attempt to teach my self to program. But I never seem to get that far i seem to lose interest and not really think of any thing that I want to make with what I learn and I also never seem to be able to figure out how I can use what I learn to make a program.

My brother says its because I don't have any goal of what I want to be able to program before I start. I have no idea. Wondering how other people found learning to program.

I had the same problem when I started. Indeed, I still do when I try to learn something new.

It's true, you need something to focus your mind on. Perhaps you could identify a program you use often, look for the flaws in it and re-write to your own standards? You'd learn loads by doing that.

Many years ago, I wrote a complete Spreadsheet application (ala Excel) and I learnt just about everything useful I ever learnt about programming doing that. I never released it or sold it, but it was still a great learning exercise.
You might want to start with slightly smaller targets, as I spent about four months solid doing that, all day, every day!

Well, I know you can teach yourself basic string manipulation by writing pseudo-conversation programs.

What's your name?
>> Bob Smith
Hello Bob! What's your favourite food?
>> Ice cream.
I like Ice cream too!

I remember doing a few of those as a kid (although maybe you have to feel the need for social interaction to write something like that...)

Man im exactly the same !

Ive even graduated with a degree in Computer Science and i still cant program !

Makes it tough finding an IT job cos im absolutely useless. But now im no longer studying i got lots of time so im learning programming all over again, i got a few ideas now so should be ok.

I just find words on a screen to be really boring,but I know they can be useful. Tried teaching myself Phython, got bored reallly fast. I've never been much good at teaching myself things.

Set yourself a target to acheive.

I started by writing a relational database management system.

This was done in C++ (linux) but with the intention that the code be portable between 32 & 64 bit processors and also between little-endian and big-endian processors (I have 2 pc's, a Sun Ultra 30 and an HP C3600 at home).

It became rather tedious when I began coding the indexing system into the block file handling classes and I have neglected it for 4 months now but you can learn so much just from atempting these projects.

It is certainly a better way to spend your free time than drinking and fighting in the bar with the NT's.

I have kinda got of task. I started learning some C++ but now i've started learning Linux. Im starting to learn how to use the command line and just learning things about using linux. I just delete windows on my 2 computers and installed 2 differen't linux distros. I have installed Red hat 9 on one and Ubuntu 5.04 on the other.

Just found out that ubuntu doesn't use root accounts like other distros. So im just now trying to figure out what it does use and weither it mite just be better to use a differen't distro that uses root accounts so I don't have to learn some thing unique and useless just for ubuntu.

You can be root in ubuntu.

I figure there has to be away. There was just some metion of using sudo instead of root on ubuntu. I just have to figure out how to enable the root account and set the password I think. Ubuntu installer doesn't ask for the password for root. Im going to have a go at getting Ubuntu to work tomorrow most likely.

I havn't tryed any of the stuff mentioned on this site yet.
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-77211.html

The lack of a root password is there for a reason. You can get a root shell using

If you insist on setting a root password then just do