What's the language that my son should be learning now that is robust, can be learned by an 11 year old, will grow with him, can be picked up relatively easily and, importantly, that he can make games with, specifically 3D ones?
My son wants to design and make games. He's 11, and has learned Scratch since he was 5 or something, has dabbled in other things, and is currently suffering through learning the Lua scripting language in Roblox. I feel like Lua in Roblox isn't quite a real language, because it's really just scripting on top of an engine, and he's not doing ground up programming. The syntax is obfuscated and it's seems to be mostly modifying internal variables and functions within the Roblox engine. He's super frustrated trying to learn it.
He wants to make videogames when he grows up. He's wanted to do this since he was 3, and is serious about it. He's primarily interested in design, but wants to learn how to make a game do what's in his mind. In other words, he's used Mario Maker, Roblox, Minecraft, etc., to design worlds for years and years and years, but really wants to get under the hood to program. And Lua seems almost counter productive in it's syntax and how it's functioning in Roblox.
What language would be best? He really ultimately wants to make 3D games. But I also want to make sure that he really understands programming, systematically. When I was a kid, I learned BASIC, which really helped me understand how to think like a programmer (even with the limitations, like line numbers, goto statements, lack of object orientation, etc.).
I think it probably needs to be an actual language, and not just scripting. Should he be learning Unity or Unreal? What's the learning curve on those? How does the programming in them work?
In a perfect world, he'd like to be making things that people can actually play, not just something he's messing around with and stays on his computer. |
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