XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

Dan — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:39:18 GMT

Just bought it through kindle on my windows phone. This surley is the future.

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

Kiveryn — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 05:54:56 GMT

I had almost the same experience, getting my first computer, a C64, in 1989 when I was 13! I summarily learnt BASIC quite soon after, moving on to hex (typed in from all the usual books and magazines) and the tried my hand at asm with the Action Replay Mk6. When I got my second computer in 1991, a 286, I was like, wth? How do I program? Thankfully for me I knew a seasoned Amiga programmer who pointed my in the right direction (while insulting the PC with every spare breath).

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

mseifullah — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 03:01:23 GMT

My copy of book just arrived this evening. I'm certain that it's going to be getting lots of use quite soon. Great foreword and thanks for letting me know that it existed.

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

Jack — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:27:26 GMT

I still have my Oric-1 in it's original packing.

XNA is a never ending playground :-)

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

SteveProXNA — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:26:21 GMT

Wow, I started with at age 12 with the SEGA SC-3000. Did anyone else learn to program BASIC on this? Only 26,220 bytes to play with, I'm guessing not many!

Steve.

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

Pryankster — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 06:31:20 GMT

Mirrors my experiences almost exactly -- Mine was an Apple II+ instead of the Oric. I completely understand that thrill of having the computer do what _you_ told it to. I still get that thrill today -- but programming is like a drug. You start off excited about "Hello, World", but pretty soon you're not happy until you've developed a n-tier scalable web application, written a compiler for your own custom "tiny language" or are pushing a few million polygons a second through a custom shader ... but I digress :-)

I'm also coming to the same conclusion that you did about the barrier to entry being very high w.r.t starting to program. When I was a kid I learned to program by typing in and converting to Applesoft BASIC the programs from David H. Ahl's 101 Computer Games (Still have it on my shelf :-).

Now, my 15 year old son is interested in learning to program games, but he sees the high-budget fare available on the consoles and can't help but be disheartened by the learning cliff -- making games today isn't just about programming, it's about integration of a huge number of disciplines -- 3d modeling, texturing, sound design, level design, music composition. Having tools like XNA (and other, simpler tools like DarkBasic, EasyBasic, etc.) softens the curve, but it's still a daunting task.

P.S.: Jaded software guys looking for that "hello, world" high? Try an embedded project ... Arduino, Netduino, BasicStamp or bare-metal PICs or AVRs. The first time you blink that LED you'll be hooked all over again!

-- pryankster

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

Roy Triesscheijn — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:05:43 GMT

Too bad though that the book title only more enforces the stigma that XNA is for WP7 and the Xbox. Why is PC dropped from everywhere (app hub forums, books, xna frontpage)?

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

Simon Windmill — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 16:44:17 GMT

This echoes my history (a little earlier and a different 8-bit machine: Sinclair ZX Spectrum) and my feelings about programming & XNA. I've been a professional programmer for years, but the little thrill I get when I see my code running on the phone and the 360 always brings me back to sitting in my living room when I was 10 and exploring how my actions would change what was happening on the screen.

re: XNA book by my colleagues Tom and Dean

Ujn Hunter — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 16:33:04 GMT

Great foreword! They obviously picked the right guy for the job!