CoderLaureate: Cool that you come from an C64 background, thats where i started long ago too, and I still am an fan owning about 15 c64/c128/vic20 computer, but to be truthful I haven't coded any 6502 code since 2003.
But lets talk documentation with this background: What book came with the C64 (and its built in Commodore basic 2.0)? There was a user manual with the (in)famous sprite ballon-demo remember? The demo itself worked but the documentation of what all these cryptic pokes did was very sparse if i recall correctly.
I eventually learned quite a bit about the c64 from excellent books like Mapping the c64 but what i learned by far the most from was through reading other peoples code (yes even in the machinecode monitor) updating some stuff, rerunning the program to see what happened if i changed something.
BlitzMax is very similar to the early c64 community in that matter: You will learn the most about it by checking out other peoples examples and see how they did things. There is no doubt a market for someone writing a book describing BlitzMax though, but like "Mapping the C64" this book does not have to be written by the developer of the computer/language.
A good example: Where in the documentation does it say anything about 'Threading'? I'm excited for it. I would like to learn how to use it in a BMax program. Where do I learn about it?
Well first of all this functionality is beta, but there are already several threads in the blitzmax programming forums that contain small snippets with examples of thread usage. But then Threading is quite a large subject that you will never completely learn from an instruction video. Sure a video can show you some small examples, but thats pretty much equivalent to the code-snippets already available in the BlitzMax forums.
I've used threads since about 2000 (Delhi and Java) at work and I want to say it's very much a "Easy to grasp, hard to master" subject (like much other stuff in programming). I had to write ~3-4 real apps/modules and face different problems involved with threads and be forced to solve them in a satisfactory way before I myself felt that I really understood them. I still am no master though :)
Programming is a lot like mathematics in this way: The more you do it the better you get. And the better you get the more humble you become because your horizon widens and you start to understand how little you know and how much more there is to learn. There will never be a day in my life I'll feel that "I now know everything there is to know about programming".
So back on the documentation subject: I don't think the pricetag on Blitz*-products entitles us to get more docs than we got. If someone would write a book I'd buy it. But using the forums/code-archives is the primary way to learn BlitzMax right now, and that works pretty well imho.
And as GaryV said:
There are numerous sites explaining how to use threading. The principle is the same for most languages.
Also for other languages there are large books on the single subject threading. Example: http://www.amazon.com/Java-Threads-Scott-Oaks/dp/0596007825
If you want to learn threading well you could pick up this book or find a good website and install java6 + eclipse (both are free/OpenSource software) and try out some examples. Most of the things you'd learn (as GaryV said) is directly applicable on BlitzMax.
But lets talk documentation with this background: What book came with the C64 (and its built in Commodore basic 2.0)? There was a user manual with the (in)famous sprite ballon-demo remember? The demo itself worked but the documentation of what all these cryptic pokes did was very sparse if i recall correctly.
I eventually learned quite a bit about the c64 from excellent books like Mapping the c64 but what i learned by far the most from was through reading other peoples code (yes even in the machinecode monitor) updating some stuff, rerunning the program to see what happened if i changed something.
BlitzMax is very similar to the early c64 community in that matter: You will learn the most about it by checking out other peoples examples and see how they did things. There is no doubt a market for someone writing a book describing BlitzMax though, but like "Mapping the C64" this book does not have to be written by the developer of the computer/language.
A good example: Where in the documentation does it say anything about 'Threading'? I'm excited for it. I would like to learn how to use it in a BMax program. Where do I learn about it?
Well first of all this functionality is beta, but there are already several threads in the blitzmax programming forums that contain small snippets with examples of thread usage. But then Threading is quite a large subject that you will never completely learn from an instruction video. Sure a video can show you some small examples, but thats pretty much equivalent to the code-snippets already available in the BlitzMax forums.
I've used threads since about 2000 (Delhi and Java) at work and I want to say it's very much a "Easy to grasp, hard to master" subject (like much other stuff in programming). I had to write ~3-4 real apps/modules and face different problems involved with threads and be forced to solve them in a satisfactory way before I myself felt that I really understood them. I still am no master though :)
Programming is a lot like mathematics in this way: The more you do it the better you get. And the better you get the more humble you become because your horizon widens and you start to understand how little you know and how much more there is to learn. There will never be a day in my life I'll feel that "I now know everything there is to know about programming".
So back on the documentation subject: I don't think the pricetag on Blitz*-products entitles us to get more docs than we got. If someone would write a book I'd buy it. But using the forums/code-archives is the primary way to learn BlitzMax right now, and that works pretty well imho.
And as GaryV said:
There are numerous sites explaining how to use threading. The principle is the same for most languages.
Also for other languages there are large books on the single subject threading. Example: http://www.amazon.com/Java-Threads-Scott-Oaks/dp/0596007825
If you want to learn threading well you could pick up this book or find a good website and install java6 + eclipse (both are free/OpenSource software) and try out some examples. Most of the things you'd learn (as GaryV said) is directly applicable on BlitzMax.