Teaching yourself to program is one of those things that you either
find impossible - or you grasp the concepts very quickly - it just depends
how your mind works. If you don't want to purchase books on the topic
- the best place to start is using a language called BASIC. QBASIC
is provided free with your MSDOS installation. Download this tutorial -
beginner.zip - and in a short time you
will be able to produce simple programs.
There is an excellent NEWS group called ALT.LANG.BASIC that
is very helpful to beginners and you normally receive quick responses to
your questions.
After you have mastered some programs with this - you might
like to try a shareware version of BASIC for Windows. Its called
LIBERTY BASIC and its available from:
It is very similar to QBasic but allows you to create Windows programs
- without knowing any of the complexities of programming Windows commands.
It was this language that gave me an introduction to Windows and gave me
sufficient background knowledge to move onto POW! There is also a
very friendly and helpful Liberty Basic community that welcomes beginners
and will answer there questions at:
BUT - if you are a beginner - don't think that you will master these overnight.
You will need to work hard and spend at least 6 to 12 months with these
languages before you could even consider moving to something like POW!
