Gift for somone interested in programming?

I have a brother in law who has a birthday coming up. He wants to eventually program video games and has an interest in apps.

What would be a good book, video series, workbook etc... that would get him on the right track to learn a programming language. He is a visual learner and results oriented, so I would imagine he should start with a language that is easy to learn and where the user can see results in a quick way.

He has very general knowledge of computers and has played with WYSIWYG app makers, but is a true novice.

Any help would help!

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kurosaki00

Raspberry Pi or an Arduino
Or a Play-I robot

Cyberscum

I don't know how well he would take in a PI or Ardunio.

I was thinking about a paid version to gamemaker or construct 2 to get him into the mindset of what he would need to know.

What about taking this guys approach? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDfIyZWMLHs

DoubleNNs

I've heard the Al Sweigart Python Game books are pretty good.
They are free to read online in HTML, so maybe check them out for yourself. I remember one is better for beginners, but I forget which.

I've also heard good things about: Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice): Will McGugan: 9781590598726: Amazon.com: Books

Pygame is supposedly one of the easier game dev platforms to learn and can actually be leveraged to make some impressive games. I don't know Pygame or even Python yet, but they are both on my list of things to learn, and sooner than later.

DevilWAH

DoubleNNs wrote: »

I've heard the Al Sweigart Python Game books are pretty good.
They are free to read online in HTML, so maybe check them out for yourself. I remember one is better for beginners, but I forget which.

I've also heard good things about: Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice): Will McGugan: 9781590598726: Amazon.com: Books

Pygame is supposedly one of the easier game dev platforms to learn and can actually be leveraged to make some impressive games. I don't know Pygame or even Python yet, but they are both on my list of things to learn, and sooner than later.

I played with Pygame, its good at presenting a simple interface to do some graphics. I can image you can create some half decent games out of it. Good for learning about the logic of programming and having a graphic out put.

kohr-ah

https://www.udemy.com/unitycourse/

If they want to be a game programmer and are just getting into it then look into this. It started as a kick starter and took off. I watched a few videos from it and they seem very straight forward and start from easy level games to by the end you are doing 3d basic games.

Google for UDEMY discount codes. A lot of times you can get courses like this for $15 - 30 rather than $200
(Example: DREAMBIG65 takes 65% off)

DoubleNNs

kohr-ah wrote: »

Google for UDEMY discount codes. A lot of times you can get courses like this for $15 - 30 rather than $200
(Example: DREAMBIG65 takes 65% off)

Or join their mailing list. They blast promotions almost weekly. Often times they allow people on their mailing lists to buy ANY course on their website for $10-15.

Mitechniq

I don't know what age he is but my son loved:

Code Monster from Crunchzilla it teaches Javascript.

Going through the tutorial even helped me understand some coding functions in relantionship to gaming.