[Tutor] hitting a wall (not a collision detection question :P)

[Luke Paireepinart]

> Ultimately, my goal is to delve into pygame and make some games and maybe
> some multimedia applications. I'd like my first project to be an old-school
> style RPG (e.g. Final Fantasy), as something with such simple graphics and
> interface would be a good benchmark of where I want to go from there
I can recommend the book "Game Development with Python and Pygame" by
Will McGugan.
This may help you when you are working on the game, but you can also
just use online resources if you'd like (that's what I did initially.)
>
> I've been progressing steadily, until now. At this point, I have a pretty
> solid understanding of strings, integers, tuples, lists, dictionaries, etc.
> and everything up to functions vs. methods and the basics of classes and
> OOP. This is where I'm hitting a wall. It's at this point the all the books
> go off in different directions and I'm not sure a) what I'm learning, b) why
> I'm learning it, and c) how this is going to help me get to my goals.
You're at the point now that you should start working on your own
simple programs that do things you need to.
The best way to learn is to come up with a problem and figure out how
to solve it yourself.  If you need any hints,
we'd be happy to help.
See, the thing about programming is that there are a lot of really
advanced topics that don't necessarily help you or
aren't necessarily useful for every problem.  For example, Regular
Expressions are very powerful and for certain applications,
they're nearly indispensible.  However, whenever I write a game in
Pygame, I don't hardly ever use them.

So writing an application you want to write will help you see the
bigger picture, and how all the things you've learned so far
can be utilized to achieve whatever goal you desire.

Honestly if you already understand OOP and classes, you're a lot
further along than a lot of people are.
When I started writing Python I didn't understand OOP at all.  In fact
I went through quite a few programs
without using it whatsoever.  Later on, when I learned what OOP was, I
went back and modified my programs
and in some cases it simplified them quite a bit.  But in some cases
it wasn't even necessary and was maybe
even more confusing to use OOP.

I'm a Computer Science grad student right now, but everything that
gets covered in class I've already learned through
my own experimentation with Python, to a pretty large extent.  You can
learn a great deal independently, if you really want to.
Free online resources and books go into incredibly advanced detail
that you aren't expected to grasp immediately.
It's a progressive thing.  Try writing some simple apps and if you
come up with a problem that you can't solve
with the tools you have already learned how to use (or can't solve
easily - most things in Python should be
easy), let us know and we'll tell you which next section of the book
you should read.

HTH,
-Luke