My Dad is impatient with the pace of my learning to program. What do I do? [closed]

Question

So my Dad bought me 5 books on programming (C++, Java, PHP, Javascript, Android) about a month ago. He's an architect and he knows NOTHING about programming. He bought me them because I told him programming was fun and I wanted to learn it.

As you might know, being a kid (I'm 14) and being told to learn programming out of dull books isn't the easiest thing. I'm always getting distracted.. I told him before that I didn't need to buy books and I could just watch online tutorials.. but no, he's so old-fashioned. He's only letting me use the books.

Recently, he started asking me what I've done with it, and I showed him a C++ program I made that takes what you type in, then assigns values to each letter (A is the first letter in the alphabet so it gets the value of 1).. and so on. It then adds up all the values and tells you it. So the word "add" would have a value of 9.

^^ That wasn't very impressive to him. He yelled at me and told me all I've been doing is screwing around. That's not true. He is extremely traditional and stubborn and doesn't listen to anything I had to say. What should I tell him?

PS: If you have any tips on zoning in on a book, let me know

EDIT: Thank you so much everyone, you have no idea how much it means to know that there are some people that understand my situation. I've read every one and I'll consider everyone's opinion. ¡Gracias!

Answer 1

I study as a software engineer and the progress of learning programming at my education has been more than just reading book.

First of all I would recommend you to learn C, because it is an ease language and many other languages (such as C++, objective-c) are built upon C. The way we did it was that we had to buy a micro chip (in our case an Atmel Mega16 with an STK 500 kit, which is just a board with LEDs and buttons on it), and then we just played around with it, programmed programs to make it bip and bop. That's more fun than just reading and writing hello world programs IMO.

When C becomes a walk in the park for you, move on to C++ and object oriented programming (OOP). OOP is the key concept in many languages and ways to think of programming and is therefore a must if you are serious with your programming. Make sure to understand the theory behind OOP before diving into it - otherwise it might be a hard proces :-)

Last but not least, I will recommend you to study different data types, such as stacks, queues, heaps etc., which are very great to understand when you are programming and reading about new languages.

Good luck my friend!

Answer 2

Don't complain, if you do, you'll just get too confident and waste your time. I have a father who doesn't believe in his son, I was angry at him before but not now. If it's not because of his high expectations, then I'll probably be a beggar today. If you really enjoy learning programming (who doesn't), keep learning, don't pressure yourself. First programming language is really the most difficult part for a programmer, once you learn it, other programming languages will be easy to learn.

Answer 3

IF you are really interested in programmming, do learn programming by getting help from online'rs & any good programmer. Else tell your father,if you are interested in other things other than programming ......

Answer 4

There are no problem u go and first read C++. Because when u read this one u find interest in develop ur mind for new one.

you say that u have 5 book no they are different from each other.

C++ and java is basic book so u read it first.

php book for web development and android book for mobile app development for android mobile(Its need the good knowledge of C++ and java u take time more than 8 month if u need to read this books).

Thanks

Answer 5

C++ as first language? Serious? Impressive... And your program is a nice problem... And screwing around is part of the job - you scratch an basic program (aiming just at the problem at hand) and after that we start to perfect it (exception handling, refactoring, etc, etc).

Even when you have a bigger system, sometimes you need a little petty project to just make sure the solution is right and apply the algorithm to be bigger system.

Answer 6

There are a few recorded computer science courses from a few universities that are worth watching. They help you learn computer science, not programming, but they are still worth a watch. MIT, princeton, stanford to name a few.

I've watched one from stanford and one from MIT that were both really good.

http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=2d712634-2bf1-4b55-9a3a-ca9d470755ee http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-002-circuits-and-electronics-spring-2007/

Since you're just starting out.. you might try the introductory course instead. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/

Answer 7

I suggest you watch these videos on youtube. They are lectures by Professor Mehran Sahami for the Stanford Computer Science class 106a - "Programming Methodology". I think that if you are at a point where you understood how to make your own program, and by the way that is impressivge no matter what your dad says, than you will be able to follow these videos.

Answer 8

For me I program to impress myself more than other people. I pay more attention to the design of the code than the application itself, which means when I try to show other people what I made, they don't ever seem very impressed. I've been programming for 3 years, and its still the same.

For example, one of my programs, on the outside, looks like something that counts from 0 to 100, maybe skipping a few numbers and repeating some numbers. But its much more than that. The code is what's so beautiful. Basically it was what I like to call a runloop, but there is a couple other terms for it. You schedule a function to run in, say, 10 seconds, and after 10 seconds that function runs. And you can have a function run every 10 seconds too. Which led me to an idea: I could make a class that, when you assign a value to it, it smoothly transitions to that value. Animation, basically. Automatically. No intervention from the programmer. And that was what the program was. The number of lines in my main() function was maybe 6 lines or so. All the other code had so many other uses, I could hardly call it a part of just that one program. And that was what was beautiful to me. I showed it to my dad's friend, who does QA, and he didn't seem very excited about it.

Basically what I'm saying is you shouldn't let other people's opinions get you down. They might just not see the power and beauty of it all. Program for your own enjoyment, and you'll be happy, and you'll want to learn more, and in return the next program you make might just impress a lot of people.

EDIT: Congratulations on becoming a programmer. For a lot of people it is very difficult to make the transition from using applications to making them. It sounds like you've successfully made that transition, and you should be proud of yourself. Its people with your dad's mindset that will never be capable of programming. Programming is a lot more than telling a computer to do this and that.

Answer 9

If you really want to learn how to think in Java or C++, then download the free versions of Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++ books (2 volumes) by Bruce Eckel. Not only do they teach you a language, but they're great for "getting" the idea of object-orientation. Eckel has a great way of explaining things and gives plenty of code examples. Bruce's books really do teach you to think; they don't just teach you language details that you will forget in a week.

To be honest, though, I think you might have a lot more fun with Ruby and Why's Poignant Guide and Shoes and the other stuff that @back2dos recommended, above. Ruby is much easier to learn and, at the same time, it's a very practical language.

I wish I had ten minutes with your dad to tell him he should be proud to have a child with enough initiative to want to learn any of this stuff! I'd look him straight in the eye and tell him to give you some serious extra credit!

Answer 10

I would advise you concentrate on only one language, as a previous poster said, but I would choose Javascript.

It's relatively easy to create a web page with some graphics on, then use some jQuery stuff to move things around, make them fade/transiton etc. It looks great to a non-coder, and is much easier than C++. Start with the examples from the JQuery documentation, and see if you can add bits or combine them together.

See also Douglas Crockford's "JavaScript - The good parts".

You can run the results on any web browser, or you can use PhoneGap to turn them into a mobile app for Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile etc.

If you want to get into hard core server programming, node.js lets you do that in Javascript too, but the skills will be mostly transferrable to other languages.

Answer 11

Do you really want to have fun developing / programming?

Here are some thought that I would give to my own son:

• LEGO Mindstorms
• Alice from Carnegie Mellon University and the great Randy Pausch
• Electronic + Programming = Coding4Fun
• There are plenty of projects that you can control machines, one of my current loves is the AR.Drone where you can develop apps to control a COOL helicopter :)

and after you start and you really enjoy what you want, well, by that time, you know exactly what you can do and every dream can be true :)

Answer 12

The face that you are using StackExchange at this age shows that u do have talent for programming. Tell ur dad to let u work at ur pace, that programming is like art , it takes years to master and there will be always something better than ur program.

Answer 13

Talk with him about his work. Then create a program that could help him in it.