Over the course of the last couple of years I had tried different ways to document my progress in developing a game.  At first I started a developer blog and intended to make a post each and every time I worked on my game.  At that time it was only a single program - Bag Boy - and I was just learning so I thought it would be simple enough to program a few lines of code, type some lines of code, and upload a couple pictures but I found myself scrambling to make posts at the end of my programming sessions.  

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After slowly abandoning my blog, I slowly started to just make Facebook posts on my personal page, which surely confused my friends and family but it was an easy way for me to catalog my progress in an easy to access format.  I had also repurposed my YouTube channel to upload videos of my progress and to help in my development process - I would program some code and record a video of the relevant changes to observe later.

 

Taking all these steps to document my progress had me think - why not write a book about my progress? 

 

Growing up I had various computer books, whether an Usborne book with colorful pictures of sprites and code samples, or intermediate programming books that always seemed too complex for me to comprehend.  I have seen books on the market from established programmers discussing their prime and I have read instructional manuals and textbooks.  But one type of book I had never read was the accounts of a beginner programmer and their take on the process of beginning.  

 

I whipped up an outline over the last few months on the general structure of the book and what I think the focus should be.  I had broken up the outline into a few main sections, starting with my background and my history with computers, my experience with gaming, the influences on my gaming preferences, memorable (to me) depictions of gaming in media, game design, and the convergence of all of these factors into my programming endeavors. 

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I had also thought it would be great to include snippets of code, just like the books and magazines from the early days of computing, where you would have to painstakingly copy line after line of code just to play a short little game.

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The working title of this book: Path to Programming: A Beginner on Beginning.

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