Memorization

No you can''t! Don''t Do IT!

Actually, you can do whatever you want, whatever works best for you.

I just want to know the what the tried and true way is.

"Oh yes, I remember the day I wrote that code, Febraruary 13, 1974 - just before Valentines day, beautiful day it was. There was a fresh snow and a very mild wind - we had roast chicken for dinner that night."

In other words...

Its not cheating to use that book, or any other book as a reference. This is what I''ve come to understand. The best way to learn a certain method or what not is to use the book, but NEVER copy/paste. Always type the code out. You can use the book like this as many times as you need but what will eventually happen is you get to recognize different things and they just stick in your mind. Then the day comes and you don''t need to look at the book.

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"In Windows, the only thing opposing safe mode would be... Unsafe mode....??"
- Me

"hmm, I know the slogans "will work for food" and "will work for free", but "will pay for work I do" seems just a bit sick "
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You''d be surprised to know how many ''professional'' programmers stop what they are doing and look up functions in a book. Many programmers have huge libraries of books on their craft and other related topics.

They don''t feel guilty, why should you?

You''ll find that the only real difference is the speed at which you code. Looking things up every ten minutes tends to hamper the development process - but that doesn''t mean it''s wrong. If nothing else it keeps the amount of bugs at a lower amount than just trying to do everything off-the-top-of-your-head.


Jay

As soon as you make something idiot proof, the world comes out with a better idiot.

I never actually sit down and try to memerize how to use a function, or how to draw a sprite in ____ (insert API here). At first I need the book, and do a lot of copying and pasting. Eventually with practice you''ll remember *some* of the stuff, not needing to go to an example. (I tend to forget how to use functions that ''I'' wrote a few months ago)

You''d be supprised just how much referencing happens in ANY technical profession. It''s often considered a good thing (especially in the industry I''m training for, it''d be impossible to do with out use of references). Generally the important thing is that you can remember the _really_ (read: "extremely") frequently used things - initing DX is probably in truth something you don''t do too often - where as drawing a polygon is.

The other great thing about programming is that you can write your self a library of commonly used function - for example functions to init directX - and then reuse them in another project. See the "Code on the Cobb" articles for the general idea