Quickest way to learn irrlicht?

[imagination304]

Hi all,

I am a beginner and know little C language.
What is the quickest way to learn irrlicht?
Any reccommedations are welcomed!

Thanks in advance

[Baal Cadar]

To develop one's own initiative.

[Acki]

Work through the tutorials and documantation...

[hellbound]

if you have little knowledge of c++ and you don't know irrlicht:

first learn c++
then go through the tutorials for irrlicht
then browse through this forum (there's a lot of interesting stuff here)
then read the documentation (it's fairly hard to understand because it's generated automatically based on classes (headers) and you must know c++

[rooly]

some might say the best way to learn is by doing. don't just read and read and read, mess around with whatever you see, find out what effects what and how much. a good word to use is: FIDDLE

[hybrid]

However, these people tend to adapt the bad style they find in common examples from the net, because they cannot judge the quality with their basic knowledge.

[gfxstyler]

why is everyone so impatient when trying to get into programming? you cant just learn it in a couple of weeks, get over it!

[stodge]

Agreed - there is no quick way. It takes hard work, time and effort.

[geekworx]

I found that the best way was to get myself a good C++ book ... reference guide with examples ... and then go through all tutorials (or at least the first 12) for Irrlicht.

Then as you start writing your own game, refere to the Irrlicht Tutorials, your C++ Reference Guide, these forums and Google for anything C++ specific you are not sure about.

Always remember, that if you have no programming experience or you don't have a proper specification written, be prepared to do a lot of re-engineering and re-factoring during your project.

The most important thing is ... never ever forget to ask for help on these forums ... the people here are the best.

[RustyNail]

why is everyone so impatient when trying to get into programming? you cant just learn it in a couple of weeks, get over it!

Not neccesarilly...
I never had enough willpower to read through any programing book cover-to-cover: Modding Quake 2 was the way I learned C++...

[hardgeus]

I am a beginner and know little C language.
What is the quickest way to learn irrlicht?

I'll give you my standard spiel:

Any API is damaging to an new C/C++ programmer. When you're new to the syntax of the language, an API can be a terrible thing -- particularly in C/C++. Most other languages are higher level and allow you to ignore lots of pesky details like memory management or how many bytes are in an integer.

C/C++ are dirty dirty languages. You really do have to know all of the funky details to be an effective programmer. And one of the problems you run into during learning is that it's hard to tell the difference between what is a C/C++ quirk, and what is an API quirk.

I know all of this because I made my jump to C++ while I was learning MFC (shudder). I had no idea what things were C++ quirks, and what things were weird-ass MFC macros. Using MFC (and later, DirectX) slowed my progress in C/C++ programming by YEARS.

My recommendation to you is to write simple command line programs that take basic text input and do cool things like trees and linked lists and other computer science-y things. There is no short path to enlightenment, Irrlicht is like 5th degree black belt stuff. If you're not a solid C/C++ programmer, you're just going to shoot yourself in the foot.

I know you're not going to listen to me, but it's my moral obligation to try to keep other programmers from making the same mistake I did.