From: eLinux.org

Beginning Programming

This page is intended to help beginners get started with learning
programming. Eventually, I’d like to provide a whole series of steps,
exercises and tutorials about programming, to help anyone who would like
to get involved with software development or game development.

Contents

Programming toolkits

“Questions Tips & Feedback Spin-Offs Documentation”. “Spin-Offs” has
sample programs related to the tutorial, video or program you’re looking
at, and “Documentation” has description of different functions or
statements you can use in your programs.

Online resources

Programming checklist

Follow these steps to learn how to program:

The very basics

  • learn what a program statement is (and what a “computer language”
    is)
  • learn what a variable is
  • learn what a conditional (if statement) is
  • learn what a loop is
  • learn what input is
    • different kinds of input (key press, mouse move, mouse button)
  • learn what output is
    • different kinds of output (text, image, sound)

Simple program 1: Write a program that counts how many times someone
presses the space bar.

Simple program 2: Write a program that counts how many times someone
presses each arrow key.

program 3: Write a program that starts counting when someone presses the
space bar, and stops counting when they hit it a second time (like a
stop-watch).

Program 4: Write a program that moves a ball to the right on the screen,
when the right arrow is pressed.

Program 5: Write a program that starts a ball moving when key is
pressed. The ball should keep moving until it hits a wall.

Note: For any of these programs, you can start with the program you used
previously, and expand or modify it to do the next task. You should save
it under a new name.

Program 6: Write a program that starts a ball moving in a different
direction, depending on which arrow key (up, down, left, right) is
pressed.

Program 7: Write a program that starts with a moving ball. When the ball
hits a wall, it moves in the opposite direction.

Program 8: Combine programs 6 and 7. Write a program that starts a ball
in a direction based on the key pressed. The ball should keep moving
after the key is released. It should bounce off the wall and go the
other direction when it hits a wall.

Languages

Programming can be done in many different computer languages.

Web Programming

Programming can be done in a web browser. This is a computer program,
like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome, that reads web pages from the
Internet and shows them on your screen. Embedded devices, like phones,
tablets and TVs also have web browsers.

In order to do web programming, you first need to learn how the browser
presents information from a web page on your computer screen. It does
this by processing the words on the web page (called “parsing” the
page), and then drawing things like text, lines and images on your
computer screen (usually, inside the browser window).

HTML

The words on a web page are part of a language called HTML (HyperText
Markup Language). You can learn about this language here:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

Basically, the words and symbols are put into a file (or returned from a
program running on the web server), and these words tell the web browser
what to draw on the screen. The process of drawing things on the screen
is called “rendering” the page.

Scratch

Here is a tutorial for a bouncing ball demo in scratch:
http://scratch-time.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-make-bouncing-ball.html

Javascript

Here is a tutorial for a bouncing ball demo in Javascript:
http://sixrevisions.com/html/bouncing-a-ball-around-with-html5-and-javascript/

Before you understand this language, and how it works, you first have to
understand HTML.

Javascript resources

Python (with PyGame)

Here is an introduction to pygame, which has an bouncing ball demo as
part of the intro.

http://www.pygame.org/docs/tut/intro/intro.html

C

One of the primitive programming languages it was developed by Dennis
Ritchie, it has set the base for the languages that we see now. It is
extensively used in system programming (Operating Systems, Device
Drivers etc.). C is a powerful language with a primitive syntax, it is a
compiled language unlike python. It is the lingua franca for a system
developer. The linux kernel is written in ‘C’.

Book: The C Programming language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie

Online Resources: http://www.learn-c.org/
(Interactive)