Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: Ask Slashdot: Any good OpenGL primer for the novice?

It occurs to me that the one thing missing is a good kid's programming language- no good sound & graphics generating language like we had on early 1980s microcomputers. While I could teach my kid TI Basic using the Classic 99 TI/99-4A emulator, I'd much rather teach him something good. Anybody know of any good OpenGL For Dummies (type, not actual title) books?

Go straight to the source

[RailGunner]

Documentation site [opengl.org] for OpenGL.org.

Better to get it straight from the source than filtered by some fly-by-night "expert"...

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

I need a primer for somebody who can't program to do pretty things, not a manual, but thanks, maybe I'll write one from that.

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[RailGunner]

I need a primer for somebody who can't program to do pretty things

And therein lies the problem. It's better to understand how to program than to do "pretty things". OpenGL, and especially 3D API's in general - aren't going to be easy for a novice programmer.

As far as graphics, you might look and see what's available as far as a Logo compiler (since you used the 80's example in your JE).

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

And therein lies the problem. It's better to understand how to program than to do "pretty things". OpenGL, and especially 3D API's in general - aren't going to be easy for a novice programmer.

And yet those pretty things are what entices a kid to program- games and simulations and demos.

As far as graphics, you might look and see what's available as far as a Logo compiler (since you used the 80's example in your JE).

And what I've found is extremely ancient- they don't take advantage of anything more t

You likely already knew this...

[Shadow Wrought]

But Powell's Technical book, a couple blocks East of the main store on Burnside, has some OpenGL programming books. (At least I remember them having some;-) You can also pick up book fromt heir website directly at either the store or warehouse and not have to pay shipping...

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

Likely to go there to pick it up (or at least to order it) but I'm looking for a recommendation. Something fun, kid oriented, with type-in games and other fun graphic/sound things....it'll be a couple of years before MY kid is ready for it, but I've got other young friends who are just getting into programming, and it frustrates me that they don't have anything as easy as I did.

shoot, might be good for adults

[zogger]

..I've tried several times to try and get started programming, never made it past page one in anything I've looked at. None of them are basic or simple enough that I have seen.

Perhaps that is embarrassing, but it's been my experience, so I am not too shy to admit it out loud. My problem is, things have to be *exact*, one character or letter off and the stuff is crap. I think 3-d in images, not a long string of text.

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

Where I thrived on the "one letter off" stuff- I started out with character-based graphics where the font was redefined with long strings of hexadecimal (fixed width font, 8x8 pixels, yields 8 bytes, or 16 characters of hexadecimal).

It's a good way to learn loops, debugging techniques, if-then and switch statements, and basic boolean algebra.

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[Shadow Wrought]

I have tried to learn programming a couple three different times and have found the "one character off" thing to be frustrating, too. But, it is also the nature of the beast. If you do find a good intro to graphics programming book, please let us know, I might be interested in giving it a try.

it's called "progress"

[Bill Dog]

As a kid I had an Atari 800 that booted up into Atari BASIC, a very simple language (it had to be, to itself consume only 8K of RAM) that provided just the basics of variables and iteration and conditionals, just enough to be able to organize and assemble the simple POKE's of values into memory locations that caused sounds and graphics to happen. Perfect for kids. Oh well.

I learned OpenGL back from the 2nd edition of this [amazon.com] book, the OpenGL "SuperBible" (ugh), now in its 4th edition. But OpenGL is a C languag

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[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'll take a look at it. I never liked the "super light" Basic versions that required Peek and Poke to create graphics- I much prefer the versions of heavy basic which at least had three-parameter Set and Reset (x,y,c) for high res, or char commands for character based.