Mobile Application Development | Lua online course?

Posted on Wed, 2012-01-11 02:02

#1

Ultrasnofire

Offline

Test Driver

Joined: 29 Jan 2011

for me i just search tutorials and look around the forums

Posted on Wed, 2012-01-11 02:10

#2

peach pellen

Offline

Staff

Joined: 12 Apr 2011

I haven't come across a course and I know here the unis I've looked at do not offer it. (Although some might, I've only looked at a couple.)

Are you starting from nothing or do you have a little experience with Corona already?

Peach :)

Posted on Wed, 2012-01-11 02:23

#3

Paul Williamson

Offline

Test Driver

Joined: 28 Jan 2011

Just playing with the codes in the hello world tutorials and looking around the forum.

Is this what everyone does? Is there no diploma course in lua people can learn from scratch ?

I realise a most people have experience in other programing languages and can pick lua up very fast but as a new comer without experience I'd like to learn from scratch so I don't miss anything.

Surely someone must have learnt the Lua code from somewhere?

With some many countries having access to the net, I think there would be a great demand for a diploma course?

Posted on Wed, 2012-01-11 03:08

#4

darkconsoles

Offline

Test Driver

Joined: 17 Jan 2011

im learning for a half-year just by myself
basically its all tuts from learningcorona.com + lua manuals at
www.lua.org/pil/ and http://lua-users.org/wiki/
and will to learn

Posted on Wed, 2012-01-11 06:30

#5

peach pellen

Offline

Staff

Joined: 12 Apr 2011

Hey Paul,

I actually started out with no coding experience of any kind not that long ago myself. (A little over a year.)

I pieced things together using the sample code Ansca provides, although admittedly when you have zero experience it can be a bit much at first.

I've got a mini series on Techority called "Corona For Newbies", which has 4 parts and has been very well received - it is definitely worth checking out as it assumes no prior knowledge.

You can find it on Techority or on http://learningcorona.com/ (That has a list of all the Corona tutorials available online, my mini series is listed first.)

Peach :)

PS - Alexey's suggestion is also a good one :)

Posted on Sun, 2012-01-29 08:56

#6

Brainbloopers

Offline

Pro Developer

Joined: 6 Oct 2011

The best resource for learning Lua (other than the reference manual) from scratch is the "Programming In Lua" or PIL book that darkconsoles linked :
@ www.lua.org/pil/

If you have 20 or so bucks to spare I would seriously consider buying Edition 2 which you can get in .pdf format (more readable for me) and deals with Lua 5.1 rather than 5 (The difference between the two is not too dramatic though)

Since you have never programmed before I would discourage you from trying to learn lua directly from that book. If you don't know what an "if statement" is or how "loops and functions" are used - you are probably (individuals vary) not ready to learn from there. Lua is a fairly simple language but documentation targeting non-programmers is scarce. If you want to take my humble advice I would learn the basics of programming in a language like python. Both me, my brother and a friend of mine (it sort of a tradition - we were all pre-pubescent at the time) first learned to program in python using a book by Josh Cogliati called "python for non-programmers". You can find it here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Non-Programmer%27s_Tutorial_for_Python_2.6.pdf

It deals with pretty basic stuff but it prepares you for the basic concepts so you don't look at me funny when I say boolean expressions and arrays (or tables). It will either take you a weekend or a few weeks to finish the book depending on the hours you put in. The most important thing is to just keep making little projects to test your knowledge as you progress.

If you can build a simple text-based paper-scissors-rock program with a high scores list saved externally than you will probably have a vague idea about what programming is all about.

At that point I would get onto the Corona tutorials or the "programming in lua" book depending on how patient you are.
-learningcorona.com is great (make sure to scroll down and look around as well ! )
-Cheeto moskeeto (youtube channel) has some decent videos.
-techority has some good intro tutorials

If you are willing to buy a book "Beginning mobile app development with corona" which you can get at Burton's Media group is a pretty good, comprehensive way to get into corona.

Just my long-winded-two-cents.

Good Luck!