What does everyone think: is it time to get everything ready for an advertising blitz for TPU?

I think the only things that would need to be done first would involve cleaning up Interest Groups, and adding any new ones for topics that would seem to be especially popular. In the first category, I asked unknown_lamer to clean up the Scheme IG (the only one that really had anything worth saving in its LG form) so that any good exercises are moved to the top level and the sections removed, but HE HASN'T DONE IT YET! How rude!

Two IG's that would probably be very smart to add are "Game Development" and "Linux/UNIX Programming." Does everyone agree, and does anyone have any more suggestions?

Definately game developement

Yeah, Linux/UNIX Programming, or maybe Linux/UNIX in general.

I would love to learn LINUX programming!!...

Yep ... If you want even more try adding networking and database engineering(Is that what database stuff is called) ... Its not the most interesting, but those concepts that I haven't learnt yet (Or the lack of knowledge of them) seriously hold me back.

Oh and how do you plan to advertise? Banners?

I think linux/unix programming would be better than just use in general - and I'm willing to spout out some exercises for it if you like. Networking could probably be swallowed into that; more or less everything network programmy is derived from the BSD sockets library, which appears to fit into the linux/unix programming niche.

I might start working on some exercises for python now; I think we should hope to have python, java, and C++ in a vaguely-useful state before we shoot for prime time. I expect we'll have people saying "help me learn programming" more after advertising, so being able to tell them to learn python, working through those exercises, then move to java, learn and do the exercises, then move to C++ and do exercisers. We can also mention that in order to have a well-rounded knowledge of programming, they should try Scheme and SML - they provide an interesting angle into less popular, and arguably better, programming styles.

I could write a Linux kernel rebuiling tutorial.

Itintl, I don't think that would be relevant.

YO... buz... I like your Idea man... I wanted to learn those programming languages in that order....

In terms of advertising blitzing, what do people think about having everyone go out and post messages about TPU on relevant message boards (woo, spam!)?

Add win32 programming too, since alot of questions in the programming forum are about it (otherwise all those questions get migrated to the c/c++ IG)

gian, if everyone can use their judgments and avoid breaking the rules of boards to which they post....

CViper, sounds reasonable, though some crazy GNU zealots look down on Windows anything on a site. =)

I just deleted everything in the Scheme IG. I will now rebuild it from the ground up or something...

I agree with the Python, Java and C++ languages, I think we should add PHP and perhaps perl there as well (I know we're getting a big list again but they are both very common languages) could perl perhaps come under linux programming though?

With Game Programming, you'll probably need to post code for 2/3 different languages (if you do post code) alternatively algorithms will be needed. It might need breaking down into sub-section LGs.

Would Graphics Programming come under Game Programming, does it deserve a seperate section or do DirectX, OpenGL and other Graphics libraries deserve their own LGs again. Gamedev.net has almost everything you need to know about game programming. I think a graphics programming section would be very good though.

Separate

Just like to add that I find the hard part with games programming for me is Graphics programming followed by game physics. Though they arn't that hard ^^