Arch Linux

SkyTod

Member

Registered: 2009-09-01

Posts: 226

New at coding

Hello, dear all!

I want to learn programming. Best way is coding real project. I found one book for C (some people said it's easy to learn it).

What I want:
1. Learn C;
2. Learn GTK (and stuff);
3. Hack OCR application.

The idea of project is OCR that can recognize text by special algorithm. Algorithm is looking for symbol that similar to previous one, but if it's visually different you can set it and next time it will recognize in right way (it should remember diffs). Main reason is recognizing similar but different symbols customized for different books (let's say imaged texts). What do you think?

I have no much background. So I need your advices. Good books/resources are also welcome!
Thanks in advance!

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: New at coding

I certainly wouldn't call what you want to achieve easy.

There's already a thread about learning C: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=128927

halhen

Member

From: Gothenburg, Sweden

Registered: 2009-04-08

Posts: 56

Website

Re: New at coding

Hi,

Great that you want to learn programming. There's many ways to do it, and I hope you find one that suits you.

I realize that it can be difficult to understand why before you've tried, buf if you're easily discouraged, I suggest that you start from a different angle. What you descibe would require you to learn many new concepts in parallell: programming in general (programming language-level logics, abstractions, data types, algorithms, etc), memory management, event driven programming, GTK, etc. Once you've got that covered, you'll soon figure out OCR isn't as simple as you describe, and will need to read up on a ton of other stuff.

I'd suggest that you start with going through a regular, renowned programming book before deciding on a project. This way you'll get some idea of what is involved. If you've set your mind on C, K&R is widely recommended. If you're rather looking to a taste of fun stuff in machine learning, I'd recommend Programming Collective Intelligence. In this book, you'll get to know a bit of Python, which likely will be an easier language to learn than C.

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bernarcher

Forum Fellow

From: Germany

Registered: 2009-02-17

Posts: 2,281

Re: New at coding

This has come up several times in the forums. Please search. You will find a lot of advice.
Closing.

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