Out of Pod Experience

Hey, gents and ladies. I've reached (what I consider) a dead-end in my current career.

In a few years I'll be able to stop (contracted work kinda deal), and continue pursuing education...but I don't really want to wait a few years.

I'm basically looking at programming, robotics and mechanical engineering. Ideally, I'd like to one day work on AI or medtech research/engineering.

So...my question for you folks is where do I start? I really only have a basic understanding of if/then/else relations so...not much.

I've sent a few e-mails to professors working on AI and such, but I get bot responses, so...help!

Thanks in advance!

I would start with google. Read up on some tutorials. What language is not really as important as the thoughts and ideas behind it. And if need be, one can swap out language as needed with only minimal "relearning" time.

Personally I would check out C++ or Java to begin with.

I started myself by typing hex codes into an old chip, then went to assembly, then to C++. I do not recommend the first two, but they did give me a good understanding back in the day.

Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs.

Take or audit a university course or two on Algorithms and Data Structures. Everything else tends to flow from there.

I started programming in the desert, modifying threat libraries in the countermeasures systems of fighter jets. All I had was an LED display and a number pad and the whole thing was in hex code. Everything had to be learned from a binder marked "SECRET" that was thicker than a phone book and I could not take it home to study it.


How you get your start does not matter. So therefore I recommend you pick a goal, an easy one, that requires you create a program. Make it a goal in the lines of what you want to do (graphics, communications, databases, control, etc) and then, search on the internet for your answers.

Just about everybody who does anything with programming puts stuff on the internet showing how to do what they do. So finding the right information is not as hard as you would think.


Once you get a feel for it, congratulations, you are doing what 90 percent of programmers already do in their daily work. There is no point where it's said that you know what you are doing. Most programming work is finding a solution that already exists and adapting existing code to your own solution.

ok so, a couple of things

1) i highly recommend you set up a unix environment to work in of some kind. if you are a mac person, you're set. if not, consider installing Ubuntu as a second operating system on your PC. the reason why i say Ubuntu is because their recent releases have the ability to be installed FROM WINDOWS, so no need to go through the preboot setup crap. i don't know how computer literate you are so if you are already comfortable with setting up your computer to dual boot, then just pick the linux OS of your choice.

2) if you are just learning, i would start with Python. install ipython and all of the necessarily python libraries. you can do this in Ubuntu through the Synaptic Package Manager, which can be found under System->Administration. once you feel comfortable writing code in python my next recommendation is to move on to C++. this will make you much more employable as C++ is the current "workhorse" language. it has a lot more subtleties than python, and you will need to learn about compilers, but it will be worth it. If Python is Jazz, then C++ is Classical Bach, Mozart, or Chopin.

3) make projects for yourself and start small! here are some projects that i think will help you learn the basic ins and outs of any programming language.

3a) "Hello World!". write a program that simply writes something to the screen (the terminal).

3b) write a program that accepts and uses user input.

3c) write a program that reads and writes to files! make it so that the behavior of the program is determined by the file read.

3d) write a program that implements classes and class inheritance. unless you are working with an archaic language like FORTRAN or a language designed for a specific purpose, these will be present in EVERY language

3e) write a program that determines whether or not a user inputed number is prime. there is a "smart" way and a "dumb" way to do this. try both and note difference in run time. assume the person trying to use the program is attempting to crash it.

3f) write a program that takes user input from the terminal, converts it into binary, and outputs the result to the screen. you will need to learn about how that language handles different data types.

this should be a good start! good luck!

Sweet Jesus, no! Python is strongly typed only at run-time, which means that a) Python IDEs provide almost no value over a straight text editor (no auto-completion, no immediate flagging of problems, etc.,) and b) it's much, much, much more expensive to discover your errors at run-time, which makes learning a lot more frustrating and a lot slower for the newbie. Plus, Python's documentation is probably the most useless I've ever had the displeasure to use.

A complete newbie would be better off grabbing a copy of VB.Net Express (free) which has a lot of hand holding, a very friendly IDE, easy GUI creation tools, one button builds, OO, easy to google for code examples/help, etc.. Once a newbie gets the general concepts down, then they can move on to a more professional language or pick up a scripting language.

the primary reason i mentioned python is because it is the easiest way to learn how to "think like a programmer" without getting bogged down in unnecessary syntax for the most part. you don't need to learn how to use an IDE to use it (any text editor will do, and this is true for all languages), you don't need to learn about compilers, and it's a scripting language, so it forces you to learn how to think in sequence.

long story short is that it will help you learn a lot without requiring a ton of overhead knowledge.

i guess that's a matter of preference. i prefer working with a text editor like emacs or vim and running and compiling on the command line to using an IDE. i feel like it forced me to learn things like make, cmake, shell scripting, etc... i feel like it's more like working on the engine of a car with your bare hands :3 again, purely a matter of preference i guess.

I am taking microcontroller class right now. We are using intel 8051 style microcontroller. All the programming for it we do using C (not C++ nor C#).

Whoa there.

Beginners should not go straight to an IDE. The small simpler programs for a beginner don't require it, and at that stage learning the ins and out of the IDE get in the way of learning the language.

Furthermore, Intellisense has made a lot of new programmers "framework dependent". They end up knowing more about the framework than how to actually write efficient code. This is a detriment. Sure it's faster, but the moment some bug comes up or something is not doing what it's expected, they have ZERO troubleshooting skill for it. I have to hand-hold so-called programmers like this all day.


New programmers should stick to the simple stuff and use the command line compilers and linkers to get a feel for how these things work. A lot of the simple free ones out there are easy to use. Then after that, it's time for an IDE and the FIRST thing anybody needs to learn with an IDE (beyond how to create a project and populate it with classes, functions, etc) is how to run a debugging session or a debugging mode. That is the true power of the IDE, not in how it makes things easier.