Hello Joe,

I don't have much time now (ditching a physics lecture to write this)
so I'll make this first one short:

Do you still want help learning to program so that you'll eventually
be able to program an MMORPG (I'm warning you: it will probably take
at least five years under the best guidance there is, but they will be
fun years with many fun games created in between)?

I offer it. I think I understand you, as I'm 18, a proffesional
programmer, I hang out with lots of hobbyist game programmers and I
used to be one (I even started two summers ago to work on - gasp - a
very cool MMORTS written in Ruby).


To see if we speak the same language:
1) I think you'd enjoy playing with a language called Logo.

Download UCBLogo here:
ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/ucblogo/ucbwlogosetup.exe

Read this VERY SHORT great tutorial and type each and every example
you see, and then play with it's results to create something else
cool:
http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/logo/turtle.html

Then read this series of three great free online books that I really
liked. While you read them, play with the turtle graphics you learned
in the tutorial and with the new ideas as you learn them to keep you
from being bored.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html

These books will get you VERY far, like... To the level I was after
about five-six years programming, and you can easily complete them
until the end of the summer.

With any question, feel free to turn to me here or on
aur_saraf / hotmail.com (MSN Messenger).

I only ask one thing as payment: to see all the cool things you come
up with. That's my enjoyment - to see what cool things young
programmers create. So whatever you create while toying with the ideas
in the tutorial and the book, send me the source code for so that I
can recreate.


Aur