13 year old learn c programing?

My nephew is 13 and wants to learn how to program c.





is there anything easy for a 13 year old to learn c and make his own firefox browser?

13 year old learn c programing?
I started programing in C around this age, and now work as a professional software developer 10 years later (albeit an entry level one). Writing something like Firefox takes years of experience... if this is the kind of result he is expecting he will be very disappointed when he gets his feet wet.





I wish I could help you with book recommendations. In general I dislike the learn this in X number of day series and that kind of thing.





An important thing to consider is that he is just trying to learn the fundamentals of programming first -- loops,, variables, etc etc. It is easy to get confused with all the garbage involved with making pretty windows, etc, etc. This may just be me being crusty, but depending on his level of expertise, I'd recommend downloading the cygwin environment from cygwin.com. Run through the setup utility and make sure you've selected gcc etc under developer tools. Use notepad, or download a free editor like this one: http://www.download.com/Crimson-Editor/3... to create your .c source files. Save them in a location like C:\Source . Open up the cygwin enviorment and type "cd /cygdrv/c/Source" (without quotes)_ where Source is the directory you have your source in. Type gcc -o filename filename.c to compile a program and ./filename to run it (where filename is the name of the source file of course).





Again this may do more harm than good. Some people are comfortable with command line stuff like this other's aren't.. not sure which category your nephew fits in.





One important tip when he begins trying to compile his programs... there will undoubetly be many errors, which can be very discouraging. The best way to approach things is to start with the topmost error. Read this error, and look at the line # it refers to. Fix it and re-compile. Often fixing the topmost error will eliminate many errors "downstream" so to speak... I know this was one of the most frustrating things for me learning... writing a bunch of beautiful code, and then passing it to the compiler only to have 100 errors or whatever spit back at me.





A valuable resource *IN ADDITION TO* a good book, is irc channels online. Hop on efnet (efnet.org) and join #c for example, and you will find many people willing to help you a little bit with problems you are having. HOWEVER, these people are not paid, they are doing you a favor by helping you out, and therefore tend to have little tolerance for people's crap. If you expect people to think for you, or hold your hand you will be flamed mercilessly. If, however, you do your reading, and your research on google etc, and ask intelligent questions in a mature way, this can be a very valuable resource.





I hope some of this rambling helped... to sum up: 13 is a great age to learn to program in C.. hopefully your nephew will catch the bug :-). The key to getting a good start is a good book... stay away from "learn this quickly" type books -- learning to program is not a quick process. Look for books that don't get bogged down in whizbangs and flashy crap.. O'Reilly tends to have good solid books in general (that's a publisher's name). Expect to be frustrated early on -- it will take time and effort to be able to build anything substantial. If your nephew is willing to dedicate some time and effort to it though, he may end with a nice hobby etc, and possibly a career down the road. Good luck and all that.
Reply:its the best age to start programming.


but i assure you that when he will make a browser like firefox he wont be 13.


provide him the best resource you could easily get.


if you want him to do something in this field then you are giving him the best opportunity in best time.





but be sure he wont remain 13 till making a browser like firefox





best of luck from me for his glowing future
Reply:I learned DOS when I was 10 and HTML when I was 12... just provide him with books/resources and let him get what he can out of them. I loved the "for dummies" books when I was around that age and still use them for other programming languages to this day. I believe there is a "C for Dummies" book. It will explain things simply enough to follow and help him get a good head-start.
Reply:Firefox and the mozilla platform is very very complicated. There are actually entire books just on Mozilla programming, beyond the more general books you have to read to even understand the Mozilla books.





If he really wants to make a Firefox browser, then take a look a the links I've provided. They kind of explain how to begin, what to study, etc.





Now, if he just wants to make a browser, I'd suggest buying a beginner's book on the .net platform. Visual C++ .net.





The book I linked at Amazon might be a good starter, but there are a ton of books to chose from.





Look at a few, there might be one that actually starts you off programming a browser.





I mention .net only because it offers one of the easiest solutions to building applications currently, and is especially helpful when making web browsers.
Reply:He should not be learning c.





The firefox project is the cumulative effort of a whole open-source team which includes some very very skilled programmers. The best he could do is download the whole firefox source code and try to build it. Which itself is no small feat, not to mention needing to download the various software to build it. Nevertheless, there are too many technologies involved in the browser.





The easiest way to building his own browser, is to succumb to using Microsoft .NET technologies.





There are a few ways to doing that:


1. Pay between $600 - $900 for Visual Studio 2005.


2. Pay an equivalent amount or more for a similar product from Borland.


3. Buy an OEM or education version for much less.


4. Recommended: Download from Microsoft the free Visual Studio Express for Visual Basic, C# and C/C++.





Why? Because all the components are already found in .NET. He would just need to drag the browser component from the component library tray and drop it onto the visual programming space.





Would he learn how to program that way? Would he be able to create a browser that behaves the way he wants? Yes and yes, because he could modify the behaviour and configuration of the components he uses. He gets to see a browser running, even before he wrote any code, just by dropping the browser component and clicking the "build" button.





He could start with Visual Basic. Perhaps, he wants to have a godzilla pounding the foreground while a the contents of a slow website is coming in. Perhaps, he could start with making the URL bar (aka address bar) being able to read in phrases like "My mommy's website" which his lookup table would actually link to the actual address of his mommy's website. May be he wants a File Explorer component tab together with his Browser component tab. May be, he wants to use the File Explorer component tab to store the hierarchy of his Favourites.





And then, after many many many months he could progress to C# or C/C++. By that time, he might decide he would rather create a simple game which would then lead him to a future of becoming a game programmer, which would make more sense.





Of course, one of the most annoying traits of Visual Basic programmers who move to C# or C++ is bringing the whole baggage of BASIC style spaghetti programming with them rather than learning to accept the conveniences offered by object-oriented programming.





I am sure certain quarters would brand this recommendation as betrayal on my part, but I don't think the kid is ripe for learning java and using hotspot components.
Reply:13 is not too young to start learning computer programming but C is very difficult as a first language. Your nephew should learn -programming- first and then learn C. Visual BASIC is much easier, so he might start with that. And you can do most of the same things in Visual BASIC. Another good starter language is Python, which you can download off the Internet for free.





Once he learns programming, then C will be easier, the learning curve will be less steep.
Reply:It would take a very long time to learn c and make a firefox style browser. If he wants to make a unique browser, he could always learn to make add-ons for firefox.
Reply:If he wants to learn how to program in C or C++. Take him to Barns %26amp; Nobel book store or another book store and purchase him a book on that programming language. Make it a birthday gift because the books are not cheap %26lt;smile%26gt;.
Reply:Way too early to aim for something like actually program a Firefox alternative software. But start off with a thin intro book, perhaps can be found in a big metropolitan public library.





Besides C is an old workhorse.
Reply:Start hitting those computer "beinning Programming" books.


i recommend u get "sams teach yourself beginning programming in 24 hours"





that how i first started