Need help understanding programming vocabulary
Posted by im-visibly-confused@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 25 comments
I feel like I'm missing the words I need to google my problems. I want to get into gamedev and in the past I've tried following tutorials for making a simple game in unity (and I guess C#?) but in every tutorial I see them typing in visual studio code and words pop up before they've typed them while that doesn't happen for me. maybe I'm just missing a setting but I'm not even sure what those autofilled things are called.
Is there a resource somewhere that shows all the definitions related to unity and visual studio code? I just dont know where to find the list of these secret words like "public" or "using" or "void" or "int" or "UnityEngine.UI" I'd love if there was just a big list that categorized all of them into the categories I dont know yet and had a little summary of what they do.
Learning to code so far feels like im a tiny creature trying to decipher the ancient words of power whoever coded this code editor made.
Comprehensive_Mud803@reddit
Go and read some introductory books, even “Programming for dummies” should do. Once you’ve read and understood them, go and read a language primer of your choice. Then practice, practice, practice.
Cowboy-Emote@reddit
The tutorials are probably assuming an intermediate skill level with whichever language they're using.
A cheat sheet of programming terms probably isn't going to carry you where you want to go. You may have to bite the bullet and learn to program.
CS50x ( r/cs50 ) is an intro cs course that's heavily C based up front, and that'll most likely serve as a good primer for jumping to the language of your choice afterwards.
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
I will look into this! a cheat sheet would help me to program though I assure you. I was a kid that would spend days of kindergarten reading a dictionary, knowing the existence of terms seems important to me but im truly at the very start of learning programming so i cant exactly identify what is useful. my basis for programming is actually those games they make you play in elementary where you nest little program blocks together so i think maybe im just looking for the big list of all the pieces of the blocks.
lurgi@reddit
You can't learn English just by studying a dictionary. You need a basic grasp of English grammar. More than that, you need to understand how languages work.
It does you absolutely no good to learn that "laugh" is an intransitive verb before you know what verbs are and that English is (generally) SVO and what that even means.
You give the impression that you are trying to skip the basics and jump straight to the advanced stuff. Don't do that.
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
I think I mostly didnt know what the basics were to begin with, so I was just trying to figure it out based on whatever I first encountered, anyway I'm rather new to reddit should I delete this post so that people stop trying to help me out?
dmazzoni@reddit
OK if you want the most concise and comprehensive cheat sheet for C#, here you go:
https://learnxinyminutes.com/csharp/
It's by far my favorite resource for experienced programmers trying to pick up a new language. I'm skeptical that you'll be able to use it as a total beginner, but you can certainly try.
Cowboy-Emote@reddit
What an awesome site! Thank you for sharing.
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
Thanks I'll check that out!
Cowboy-Emote@reddit
There's some fairly complex "bare metal" concepts underlying the vocabulary. Like the other guy suggested though, just google the terms of that's your thing.
If you want a more magical (abstracted away) introduction to coding, python is fun to learn. In my experience, everyone is different though, the lower level languages were easier to digest as an advanced beginner python user.
dmazzoni@reddit
Please don't edit your post or delete it! It's better to leave your original question so others can learn from it.
Gawd_Awful@reddit
You should go through some basic C# tutorials before trying to jump straight into game dev
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
thanks for the advice but I have yet to find a tutorial that answers my question ot provides a list of the words, do you happen to know any?
Gawd_Awful@reddit
Then you either arent going very far in the tutorial or you are picking a tutorial that assumes you know C# and is instead teaching you how to do something specific. All of the things you gave examples about are Day 1 programming concepts in any language
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
I may have been picking bad tutorials, but now i feel like i have a lot of jumping off points, thanks guys
dmazzoni@reddit
Here's a list of all of the keywords in C#:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/keywords/
Here's the documentation for all of the classes in Unity such as UnityEngine.UI:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.ugui@1.0/api/index.html
However, u/Gawd_Awful is right. You can't just look up these words, you're missing "week one" level material if you don't know these.
Start with something like one of these:
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/csharp
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
thank you!!
smichaele@reddit
Your questions will be answered by learning the language.
rupertavery@reddit
It's called Intellisense and you need to install something in VS Code to set it up correctly.
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
will look that up, do you know ehat the autofilled words are called? like what are the terms for those different groups?
rupertavery@reddit
It really looks like you need to actually learn the language. Doing it this way is slow.
Head on to r/learncsharp and ask not about these things but about where you can start to learn about the language. So ask for resources, youtube videos, tutorials. Google with the keywords c# tutorials, c# basics.
Also you should probably download Visual Studio 2022 Comnunity and start with that instead of trying to configure VSCode as it's not as straightforward.
As you write programs and research you will come across terms. Rrsearch more on those terms, but focus on learning to code first and becoming familar with it. Don't focus too much on the small details until it becomes natural.
I might suggest looking here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/csharp-for-beginners/
https://www.w3schools.com/cs/index.php
The term for all the keywords in c# is the syntax
https://www.w3schools.com/cs/cs_syntax.php
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
thanks!!
smichaele@reddit
It's called a language's grammar and syntax, similar to any spoken language that you may learn. You might try googling some statement you don't understand or check out the c# language reference..
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
thank you!! this seems to be what i was after!!! thanks :>
ToThePillory@reddit
You don't need a list, just Google them.
Like "what does 'using' do in C#".
I just Googled it and got the exact answer.
im-visibly-confused@reddit (OP)
in this scenario ive never heard of "using" before so i just dont know any of the terms to begin with