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Do whatever it takes first off to get some self-achieved result, modding an open source project, cobbling together stuff without regard to IP. Get SOMETHING running, anything. Once you do, you will feel you made real progress. You need to get this sense of "traction" early on, when you know you can make stuff that can run, then you can really get down to learning, testing, and playing around. For quite a while, it's not going to be pretty, or something you can sell, but it will get you started. Keep building on what you learned. as you get better with just "making things that work," then work on making them better. Read, read, read, play, read. Don't worry if it looks bad, you need to conquer logic and data and achieving expected results before bothering with style. ...So now you think you can write stuff, next, look to see if it is secure. Could you hack your own stuff (probably easily early on), start looking for tips on how to tighten your work (start with anything affecting your stuff externally, data, calls, URLs, etc.) and make it safe for others to use, research common vulnerabilities, make sure you have them covered, etc. Also try to get some coding aesthetics in there, clean up code; name your functions, fields, variables sensibly, etc. Start constructing your project structure: configuration, code, library folders, sub-folders, etc. Now look at end-user aesthetics (there's so many elements to developing, don't overwhelm yourself by doing them all at once). Act as if you are "the user", enter the data, play the game load, save - role-play as if it were one of your parents/grandparents, is it understandable?, easy?, fail-proof? (or is that "fool"proof?) Enhance - now you can make some nice stuff. But from your perspective is it cool? Now you can work on getting in your style, new features, cut some edges... Keep working it. |