Starting out learning gLua & Staying motivated.

Starting out learning gLua & Staying motivated.

Sometimes it gets hard to focus, I'm interested, no doubt, but sometimes I just want to watch YouTube because failure - is one of my darkest fears.
Any advice?

Thanks,
- Devin

 

Having a goal/project and someone to work for always makes me motivated.

Join a community and explain you are a developing coder, and learn from your jobs/experiences.

Shoutout to Martz for keeping me motivated on City 2. (And my C16 post.)

<3

 

I own a community - SectorSeventeen.

 

It wasn't a PDF. Not that I remember. I'm on my phone, but just Google lua PIL.

EDIT: http://www.lua.org/pil/1.html

 

You don't just learn a language by reading though. You've also gotta be good at math and logic, you should be consistent and be able to figure out problems, and you need to consistently do little projects to develop your skill. When I was first learning python I did a few of my own exercises every day in class, where we'd plan out something we want to do or just have functionality with in python, then we'd do it.

For basic things, make a math questions game where:
- You can choose mult/div/ads/sub/mixed
- How many questions you want to do
- Highest and lowest numbers (floating point)
- You get n number of chances to get a question right
- It tells you if your answer was higher or lower than the real one
- It tells you the answer after you've failed n number of times

That's an example of a project that I worked on when I started working in python. It's a good exercise to learn how to use dictionaries, loops, variables, input and output, and the language's syntax when it comes to how it's laid out.

 

The "You have to be good at maths" thing is bullshit. The most advanced thing I did (for reals) is percentages. I wouldn't say trigonometrical functions are hard at all, because all you need to know is what it'll produce. I don't know how to do them on paper, but I know that if I slap sin on a number and add some varying number to it (I tend to use CurTime (current server uptime)), it'll get me a pulsing effect if I apply it to the right places.

The most important thing you can do when it comes to motivation is to set yourself a goal, preferably big. That should be the first thing you do.

 

Very good Devin. A good way to keep yourself motivated is to think of all the things you can do once you really learn Lua. A lot of stuff.

 

You could even have meatspin pop up for every player on the server! Imagine the immense power!

 

Or use rcon lua_run to ban everyone on the server within the blink of an eye!

 

Maybe when you're doing what you do, but (taking this from people I know who've gone into CE+EE, SE, and CS) once you hit college or university or need to work in graphics rendering, you're going to be doing an assload of math.

 

I don't think people are talking trig and stuff when they say you gotta be good at math. In derma, for example, it's not Visual Studio where you can drag and drop controls. You have to think of exactly where you want the control, what size it should be, and where it should be in relation to its size.

It's all basic math. PEMDAS, but it's a lot of math, depending on what you're doing.

 

The only real math I have needed so far in GMod has been vector math. Cross product and dot product to determine left/right compared to a vector, angle between vectors and stuff you need that for (which side of a plane is a point on, how far is a point from a line, etc.)