[nstrydom]

Personal Introduction

Spoiler

well, i apologize if this isnt quite up to D.I.C. standards but I decided for learning purposes I would join a forum. I'm 22 years old, and been programming since I was 11. Started with BASIC(Alot of you have too) and moved to C when i was 12, C++ at 14, and last month began learning C#. I'd like to think because of my broad knowledge of syntax and methods/functions that im an intermediate programmer/developer but my lack of experience makes me think that Im just a beginner, thus the quick intro. I apologize for the sloppy code and lack of comments, bare with me....

Now, Im writing a quick console Hangman game, the problem is I discovered my approach required the building of a char array -> char[] from multiple char variables. I'm now lost, can someone point me in the right direction?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        string[] wordList = { 
                                "Baseball", "Tackle", "Dubstep", "Ignorance", "Limitation", "Sausage",
                                "Destruction", "Patriot", "Computing", "Assembly", "Coding", "Hackers",
                                "Football", "Downward"
                            };
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            int guessRemain = 7;
            int wordSel = GenerateRandom();
            Program o = new Program();


            char[] wordChar = o.wordList[wordSel].ToLower().ToCharArray();
            int MAX_BUF = wordChar.Length;
            

            Console.WriteLine("\nHANGMAN v 1.0\n\n\n\n");
            char[] userInput = PromptUserEntry();
            char[] solution = ScanForMatchingLetter(wordChar, MAX_BUF, userInput);
            
 
            Console.Read();
        }
        private static char ScanForMatchingLetter(char[] wordChar, int MAX_BUF, char[] userInput)
        {
            char[] solution = new char[MAX_BUF];
            for (int i = 0; i < MAX_BUF; ++i)
            {
                if (userInput[0] == wordChar[i])
                {
                    solution[i] = userInput[0];
                    
                }


            }
            return solution;
        }
        private static char[] PromptUserEntry()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Pick a letter:");
            char[] userInput = Console.ReadLine().ToCharArray();
            return userInput;
        }
        private static void DisplayGuessLetterLine(char[] solution)
        {

            Console.Write(solution);
            
        }
        private static int GenerateRandom()
        {
            Random randNum = new Random();
            int wordSel = randNum.Next(0, 13);
            return wordSel;
        }

    }
}

Any input on the subject is greatly appreciate, and as you can see I'm not quite newbie but I still have a lot to learn. The goal is to receive help and give help, I learn better that way. Thank you!

This post has been edited by tlhIn`toq: 26 April 2012 - 09:04 PM
Reason for edit:: Added spoiler tags

[tlhIn`toq]

Quote

problem is I discovered my approach required the building of a char array -> char[] from multiple char variables. I'm now lost, can someone point me in the right direction?

How is that a problem? Lost about what? Are you experiencing a crash, or exception error?

Quote

namespace ConsoleApplication1

Is this really your first C# application? Have you worked through any self-teaching books from cover to cover first, before trying to develop a program of your own design from scratch?

You have a return type problem here; the return type is specified as a char but you are returning a char[]

private static char ScanForMatchingLetter(char[] wordChar, int MAX_BUF, char[] userInput)
        {
            char[] solution = new char[MAX_BUF];
            for (int i = 0; i < MAX_BUF; ++i)
            {
                if (userInput[0] == wordChar[i])
                {
                    solution[i] = userInput[0];
                    
                }


            }
            return solution;
        }

Don't make a new Random every time you call this method. Just make one instance and keep re-using it. Otherwise you won't get any variety in your generator

            Random randNum = new Random();

private static int GenerateRandom()
        {
            int wordSel = randNum.Next(0, 13);
            return wordSel;
        }

[nstrydom]

Wow, is it really that simple that I set the wrong return type... Well thank you for pointing that out, I knew that more than one mind makes finding syntax errors easier, and also i appreciate the tip on the Random instance. And yes its an exception error, sorry for being to vague, not my first C# application but my first programming forum. Out of curiousity
how would you have approached it.

Output should look something like this

HANGMAN v 1.0



_ _ _t _ _ _t _ _ _ _

Guesses remaining: 4
Pick a letter: 

[tlhIn`toq]

Quote

Out of curiousity
how would you have approached it.

Look down at the bottom of this page...

See all those links to other hangman game threads... Some of them even specifically state they are hangman in console, just like your project.

I would have started by looking at the techniques that others before me tried, and hoped they sparked something that hadn't even occurred to me.

Beyond that, I might recommend this article on how to stub out a project in an organized plan then flush out each part as possible.

You seem to be taking a serious approach to learning this.

Hopefully some of my standard resources will help:

Quote

Where do I start?

You start by learning a coding language FIRST.
Learn to plan before you type.
THEN you start designing software with a purpose.

---

Finding answers to specific problems:

Spoiler

Sometimes just knowing where to look can make all the difference. Google is your friend.
Search with either "C#" or "MSDN" as the first word: "MSDN Picturebox", "C# Custom Events", "MSDN timer" etc.
How to do a good search that will get you targeted answers.

Once you have that MSDN page that describes the function, you may not be familiar with out to actually get useful information from that page. There is a LOT of data there. So what is the important parts? Read this guide to reading the MSDN.

Don't think you are the first person to ask a question. Try a search on this site to see if someone has already brought up this problem. Also, as soon as you post your question go to the bottom of the updated page: You will see where the system has already analyzed your question and tried to find similar threads for the same question, so check those links out.

---

---

Resources, references and suggestions for new programmers. - Updated Mar 2012

---

Spoiler

Quote

I already have a background in programming from this other software/technology/lanugage so I don't think I need to do tutorials

Here's how I look at doing tutorials even if one has a coding background that makes one think they don't need to do tutorials:

• If one's background really is enough to not need the tutorials, then they won't take long - So what's the harm?
  
• If the tutorials do take a while, then it might be time to re-think how much of one's old experience really applies to the new technology.
  
• There's no down-side. Every tutorial/series teaches something in a new way. Maybe you pick up a neat trick or a different approach to something that you already knew.

The stages of asking for homework help on a forum



But honestly, just typing away and seeing what pops up in Intellisense is going to make your self-education take 20 years. You can learn by trying to reverse engineer the language through banging on the keyboard experimentation - or you can learn by doing the tutorials and following a good "How to learn C#" book. There are so many great "How do I build my first application" tutorials on the web... There are dozens of "Learn C# in 21 days", "My first C# program" type books at your local book seller or even public library.

Beginner:

Java

Spoiler

Best beginner books
Reading and writting a file in Java

C#

Spoiler

C# Reading list by Eric Lipert

C# Fundamentals: Development for absolute beginners (video series)
Build a Program Now! in Visual C# by Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-2542-5 is a terrific book that has you build a Windows Forms application, a WPF app, a database application, your own web browser.

Martyr2's mega project ideas list is a great place to start on developmental projectst that you can learn from; rather than trying to make something complex like a game as a self-teaching tool {that never works for anyone}

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

D.I.C. C# Resource page Start here
Intro to C# online tutorial then here...
C# control structures then here.
MSDN Beginner Developer video series
MSDN video on OOP principals, making classes, constructors, accessors and method overloading
MSDN Top guideline violations, know what to avoid before you do it.
Design patterns as diagrams

I hate sending people to another site when we have such good tutorials here, but this series shouldn't be overlooked.
Programming OOP in C# - Part 1
Programming OOP in C# - Part 2
Programming OOP in C# - Part 3
Programming OOP in C# - Part 4
Programming OOP in C# - Part 5

Writing a text file is always one of the first things people want to do, in order to store data like high-scores, preferences and so on.
Writing a text file tutorial.
Reading a text file tutorial.
.Split()ing a string

Have you seen the 500+ MSDN Code Samples? They spent a lot of time creating samples and demos. It seems a shame to not use them.

Intermediate:
Microsoft Events (webcasts and podcasts)
The tutorials below walk through making an application including inheritance, custom events and custom controls, object serialization and more.
Quick and easy custom events
Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2
Separating data from GUI - PLUS - serializing the data to XML
WPF version (WPF-MVVM data binding)
Passing values between forms/classes
Decouple your multi-threaded work from the GUI so forms don't hang

Working with environmental variables
'Why do we use delegates?' thread
And everyone always wants to connect to a database, right out of the gate so Database tutorials right here on DIC

C# Cookbooks
Are a great place to get good code, broken down by need, written by coding professionals. You can use the code as-is, but take the time to actually study it. These professionals write in a certain style for a reason developed by years of experience and heartache.

Everyone:
Debugging tutorial
Debugging tips
Debugging in detail
Great debugging tips
It still doesn't work, article

I urge you to work through the C# learning series here on DIC, and to work a self-teaching book from cover to cover before you even think about designing your own applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your productivity, Microsoft press, ISBN 0-7356-2640-5 Has many, many great, real-world tips that I use all the time.

These are just good every-day references to put in your bookmarks.
MSDN C# Developers Center with tutorials
Welcome to Visual Studio
Free editions of Visual Studio 2010
Student editions of Visual Studio


Windows Presentation Foundation:
Create Animations Programmatically

Some of my common tips (some may apply more than others to your specific style):

• You have to program as if everything breaks, nothing works, the cyberworld is not perfect, the attached hardware is flakey, the network is slow and unreliable, the harddrive is about to fail, every method will return an error and every user will do their best to break your software. Confirm everything. Range check every value. Make no assumptions or presumptions.
  
  
• Take the extra 3 seconds to rename your controls each time you drag them onto a form. The default names of button1, button2... button54 aren't very helpful. If you rename them right away to something like btnOk, btnCancel, btnSend etc. it helps tremendously when you make the methods for them because they are named after the button by the designer.btnSend_Click(object sender, eventargs e) is a lot easier to maintain than button1_click(object sender, eventargs e)
  
  
• You aren't paying for variable names by the byte. So instead of variables names of a, b, c go ahead and use meaningful names like index, timeOut, row, column and so on. You should avoid 'T' for the timer. Amongst other things 'T' is commonly used throughout C# for Type and this will lead to problems. There are naming guidelines you should follow so your code confirms to industry standards. It makes life much easier on everyone around you, including those of us here to help. If you start using the standards from the beginning you don't have to retrain yourself later.
  You might want to look at some of the naming guidelines. Its a lot easier to start with good habits than to break bad habits later and re-learn.
  
  
  • Guidelines for names
    
  • Naming guidelines
    
  • Design guidelines for classes
  
  
  
• Try to avoid having work actually take place in GUI control event handlers. It is better to have the GUI handler call other methods so those methods can be reused and make the code more readible.
  
  Spoiler

  
  

  btnSave(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveMenuItem(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveContextMenu(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  FormMain_Closing(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      if (IsDirty) SavePreferences();
  }
  

  
  
  
• Don't replace lines of code that don't work. Instead comment them out and put your new attemps below that. This will keep you from re-trying the same ideas over and over. Also, when you come back to us saying "I've tried this 100 different ways and still can't get it", we can actually see what you tried. So often a failed attempt is very very close and just needs a little nudge in the right direction. So if we can say "See what you did in attempt 3... blah blah" it helps a lot
  
  
  Spoiler

  // Try #1 - May 1, 0900hrs
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #2 - May 2, 1700hrs   Okay, plan B.  What if I do it *this* way
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #14 - May 3, 0500hrs after 5 cans of RedBull.  Maybe I should get some sleep. I can't think of anything else but this last idea
      code
      code  
      code
  
  

  
  If you are using Visual Studio you can select a block of lines and hit control+k control+c (Kode Comment) to comment it out. control+k control+u (Kode Uncomment) to uncomment a selected block.
  
  
  
• I strongly suggest installing VMware or some other virtualization technology on your development PC so you can create a couple virtual computers for testing. This would allow you to debug and test inside: WinXP32, XP64, Vista, Win7x32, Win7x64... etc. without having to actually have 5 physical PC's. Visual Studio will let you send the debug directly into one of these virtual machines so you can watch it operate, check its variables, see the crashes and so on just as if it were debugging on your real machine.
  
  
• This can't be stressed enough in today's world of cell phone messaging:
  Don't use txt/sms/leet/T9 speak like: u no, u r, dnt, wut i m do-n, coz, al gud, b4, ny1, and so on like this guy:
  
  
  Spoiler

  dis not b d'hood dawg... You are sitting at a real keyboard with a real monitor, not a cell phone. You are not here texting your high school posse to come to your kegger after their shift at Taco Bell. You are here asking for help from senior coding professionals who graciously donate their valuable time to helping the next generation of coders with their chosen craft. Please try to show them, yourself and the industry some respect by writing at least at an eighth grade level. (IE: English not ebonics or SMS, real words, punctuation and so on). If you can't take your own problem/question seriously enough to write like an adult, then why would you expect anyone else to take it seriously?
  
  When you write a post you are presenting yourself. Your writing style is all you have to show others who you are and what you stand for. When I see posts filled with lack of capitalization, SMS text like 'Urself', lack of punctuation and so on; what I see is someone who just doesn't care to make even an eighth grade presentation of themselves. I also see that you feel we are not worth the effort. Posts that look like this show that you don't feel the person you are talking to is worth speaking to as an adult. If you show this level of contempt or apathy towards someone you are asking for help how can you expect to be taken seriously or expect to receive that expert's fullest attention and time to help you?

[umairkz]

nstrydom, on 26 April 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

Wow, is it really that simple that I set the wrong return type... Well thank you for pointing that out, I knew that more than one mind makes finding syntax errors easier, and also i appreciate the tip on the Random instance. And yes its an exception error, sorry for being to vague, not my first C# application but my first programming forum. Out of curiousity
how would you have approached it.

Output should look something like this

HANGMAN v 1.0



_ _ _t _ _ _t _ _ _ _

Guesses remaining: 4
Pick a letter: 

can u post the full code of this game. because this error occor char to char[]
i tried it but its notworking

[pharylon]

Quote

Wow, is it really that simple that I set the wrong return type... Well thank you for pointing that out, I knew that more than one mind makes finding syntax errors easier, and also i appreciate the tip on the Random instance. And yes its an exception error, sorry for being to vague, not my first C# application but my first programming forum. Out of curiousity
how would you have approached it.

Output should look something like this

I was pretty proud of my console Hangman game back in the day. It's here. I consider it my first "real" program.

[umairkz]

I was pretty proud of my console Hangman game back in the day. It's here. I consider it my first "real" program.
[/quote]

but i want simple code as it is in this forum .
i appreciate your code . that was awsome.
but can u giv me little simple working code for hangman.

[JackOfAllTrades]

No, we don't hand out code to cheaters.

Closed.