I just want to say hello and introduce myself. I'm a freshman at Virginia Tech majoring in computer engineering. My first computer was Mac Performa, so I'm a mac person mostly. I have a Dell inspiron now as my main computer because school required a PC for engineers. This laptop is my first real PC, so I'm still relatively new to Windows although I built some older (pentium IIs) computers for a home office that have Win2k loaded on it. I think all the operating systems, mac, pc, linux, are all good in their own way and have their own quirks. (I have given up the arguement of which OS is better...)

Programming language wise, I can learn just about any language if I have enough sample code. So far I taught myself Basic, RealBasic, VisualBasic, qBasic (my favorite ), C++, Perl, and right now learning to make batch files.

I hope to answer as many questions as I ask, so anyone feel free to ask me anything.

Welcome to MSFN, BronzeG3!

I'm sure your expertise will come in handy. Enjoy your stay!

welcome to msfn can i ask what resources you used 2 do your programming and what language you would recommend me to learn as in the easiest to learn i can already do batch files.

I learned everything mosly by example. I started with basic, I would say anyone who wants to start in programming should start there. For basic, I recommend finding Qbasic and use the help file extensively. Same thing with realbasic/visualbasic. Look at various commands, see what you can do with them, and try to make a program that is somewhat useful. One of my first programs in realbasic was just a window that had random balls bouncing around. For Perl the book "Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web" was invaluable. It acts like a reference book with tons of example code. For C++, i just picked up a text book from a used book store. The example code was useful more then any other text.

What also is good practice is finding a simple game, and try to reproduce it. I started doing an online version of Dope Wars, learned alot from working on it, but never finished it. Good luck.