

How I went from knowing nothing about programming to being a published game dev - whitakr
http://polymerapp.com/my_story

======
duopixel
The actual story is linked in the nav (for those wondering).

This matches my experience with programming too. It's just beautiful how
pieces fall into place when you first start programming.

I remember first taking a look into Rails when it was first released, as I'm a
designer and I was into 37signals work back when they were a design shop. My
reaction was "what the fuck is this"?

Some months later I had to collaborate front-end code with git, and ssh into a
couple of servers. I started to feel comfortable at the console, so I took a
look at Rails again, but it was still too difficult.

Wanting do add some interactivity to my front-end code, so I started using
jQuery. Of course it was the naive selector spagetti code, but it got me
started with programming. Took a look at Rails again, too hard.

I then dabble into really simple MySQL databases driven by PHP. What a
nightmare, wasn't this supposed to be solved by ActiveRecord? I take a look at
Rails again, and it starts making sense.

Then the pre-parse craze came out, so I learned CoffeeScript and Sass.
CoffeeScript happens to greatly simplify js OOP code, and has some bits of
Ruby's syntactic sugar, so this time I another look at Rails and suddenly it
all starts making sense.

All those bits and pieces you collect from real project experience come
together and suddenly the you have crossed the gap to create a full web
application.

~~~
justjimmy
Personally, this is one of the biggest hurdle in making myself to
learn/understand coding – _how everything fits together._

HTML/CSS is easy enough, but I still don't understand how Ruby/Rails fit with
HTML/CSS in web development/application. I read Rails is a framework coded in
Ruby, and they're used for web development/apps – so I look at Ruby and that's
where I get lost. Starting from the bottom (learning about arrays and what
not, it's hard to stay focused when you don't know what exactly is the benefit
and outcome of all this learning and how it fits in web development).

I came across a path, or tree skill, that recommends how one should approach
web development:

HTML > CSS > JS/PHP > JQuery, then once you get that down, it's Ruby > Rails.

Hopefully when I look at Ruby/Rails, I won't feel so lost again.

~~~
dclowd9901
>you don't know what exactly is the benefit and outcome of all this learning
and how it fits in web development

This is not your fault; most tutorials and intros are horrifically coded and
introduced.

You'll often find obscenely arbitrary examples that have literally no place in
actual coding. Take for example Backbone.js' introductions. It's an incredibly
powerful tool for front end MVC work, but it took me a long time to "get it",
because there are literally no examples on their site that pertain to any
realistic or practical usage of the framework.

To wit: <http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#Model>

They themselves admit that this is a useless example, but choose to use it
anyway. It confuses the Model and View purposes, and if it appeared in any
actual implementation of Backbone, would break just about every convention in
existence. Why even use it?

I know they want to avoid telling people how to use it, because it's so open-
ended, but it doesn't hurt to establish some common practices or mechanisms.
It took me a long time to figure out a good way to link models and views
agnostically, simply because they don't address that whatsoever in the docs.

------
jiggy2011
From time to time it's good to have a reminder as to why many of us got into
programming in the first place.

It wasn't to sit on HN for hours on end discussing the merits of various
language paradigms & frameworks or implications of polynomial growth
algorithms, but to actually _build shit_.

Not much beats the satisfaction of having working software in front of you
that does something cool and knowing that it's all yours.

------
nova2wl
I've always had a fear of writing spaghetti code that it had prevented me from
actually coding. I think that has been a big hurdle for me starting out.
Reading articles like this though definitely helps me out.

~~~
gte910h
I'm a professional software product developer who writes messy code all the
time (true spagetti code isn't really possible today, it's a thing done only
in assembler).

After awhile you realize the pain of doing messy everywhere, and do it only
where it makes sense (Prototypes, quick fixes, first implementations, etc).

But you know what runs worse than messy code? No code at all.

~~~
gtrak
you're from gatech, aren't you?

~~~
gte910h
Yes, although that was a few years ago.

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ja27
You could improve your icon. The game has such interesting shapes but the icon
is just one plain shape. Making the icon one or more of the more interesting
shapes would catch attention. Also, to me those diagonal lines somehow make it
feel unfinished or like a placeholder. I'm not sure what they remind me of.

The app name in iTunes could include some of the description: "Polymer - slide
to create never-before-seen shapes". That would catch more eyes on a list of
apps.

------
alexgaribay
_If there is one piece of advice that I can share about learning to program,
it is this: PROGRAM A LOT_

I feel that this is very good advice. I give this same advice to friends who
want to get into programming.

I'm glad to have read about your great progression in your programming; going
from no experience to creating a pretty sweet game.

Congratulations on the release! I already got a copy :)

------
Ravenlock
Great story. Downloading a copy of Polymer right now. Congratulations on
getting your baby out into the world!

------
taylodl
More doing. Less talking. Good job!

------
moeffju
I wish this was available for Android. Any plans to port it?

~~~
whitakr
Possibly this summer!

~~~
exim
Have you considered any cross-platform frameworks?

