Complete beginner's documentation?!

Hi all, after a few weeks of asking questions in #blitzbasic and minor research, I decided to choose Blitzmax as my introduction into programming.

Earlier today I purchased Blitzmax and because the computer i'll be working on doesn't have a connection to the internet, I burned Bmax along with a guide to a cd.

So anyways I get to my room and I bootup my machine and install Blitzmax no problem. I finished reading all of the documentation under User Guide [+] and was now ready to begin the Language [+] heading in the NavBar. This is where I _thought_ I would start learning how to actually program in Blitzmax.

I'm totally lost, this doesn't even seem to be documentation in any sense of the word, it's more of a reference for someone who is already a comfortable programmer. I began reading the "Welcome" section which basically tells me nothing other than to read the part about what makes Blitzmax differ from the ordinary BASIC _IF_ I'm a literate BASIC programmer.

I sincerely hope i've overlooked something, or i've made a mistake. Otherwise I'm highly considering requesting some sort of refund on my purchase.

Welcome :)

The lack of proper documentation for BlitzMax has been talked about a lot in many threads as people fealt it was poor. Nothing has been done about this and all requests for updated documentation have fallen on deaf ears.

Anyway, the community did at least try and compliment the documenation by providing tutorials and how-to's in the tutorials forum.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/topics.php?forum=112

Look for the beginners guide to blitzmax which helped me greatley to understand blitzmax.

I don't think you should ask for a refund but would recommend that you go through the tutorials forum, read some of the stuff in there and learn by experimenting. Test it out for a couple of months and then if you feel you still don't get it ask for a refund.

For a complete beginner's guide to BlitzMax I recommend reading this document:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=42519

Thief,
Goto this resource page for some good beginner tutorials. Particularly Wave's Beginners Guide to BlitzMax

How come stuff like that wasn't already in the documentation? It's been a year, so the documentation should have been improved by now.

I've been trying to help Thief, but frankly he has no prior experience with programming and with documentation like this he really just can't work this out.

The documentation, as is, is pathetic. It's easily the weakest point of the entire package, and when beginners/the-completely-inexperienced buy something like this they need proper, well-written documentation. This should be first and foremost on the todo list.

Well the reason is that Mark and skid wrote the docs, and since they wrote them they've been busy improving the program rather than documentation.

I'm sure the docs will be updated though at some point.

As I mentioned in the first post, I burned a guide along with Blitzmax, the very same guide that -=..Amon..=- just recommended to me.

It seems a little better than the actual "documentation" provided with Blitzmax, but I still have 0 prior programming expierence as Crow Leone has mentioned, I have no idea where to begin with Blitzmax or more importantly how?

Wave's guide seems like it defines certain parts of Blitzmax and programming, but even if I were to finish reading it I would still have no idea how to write a program of my own, or incorporate anything from his guide/reference into one.

Anyway I agree completly with Crow Leone, and I thank him for the help/advice he's been able to give me. If Blitzmax perhaps had more User documentation or even a book of some sort I probably wouldn't be complaining, but I have nothing to follow or learn from at all. But realizing the age of Blitzmax I wouldn't expect much anyway.

Thief,
See whether this can get you started. A short intro I wrote sometime ago but never released. download file here
Good Luck. If you need help, just ask around here. The good thing about Blitzmax is its community.