Programming Languages for AR Development
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Which Programming Language Should I Learn to get Started With AR Development?
There are different technologies and engines available to create AR applications. One option is the 3D engine Unity where application logic can be implemented in C# (Ferrone, March 2019).
When using the Unreal Engine, implementations can be done in C++ (Doran et al., 2019). However, C++ is not an essential prerequisite for the Unreal Engine as it also provides a visual scripting language called Blueprint (Ferro, 2019).
Another option is to develop AR experiences for the Web. In this case, you should study Web technologies and the scripting language JavaScript.
Introductory Courses
For each of the common programming languages for AR development, we have gathered some introductory tutorials which can get you started.
C#
Microsoft provides an interactive beginner course for C#. In this tutorial series, you can create a first “Hello World” application which demonstrates the fundamental techniques of the programming language. Following this, there are in-depth tutorials for working with numbers, if-else statements, loops and lists. It has a dedicated section for object-oriented programming, too.
If you plan on using Unity, there is a dedicated course “Coding in C# in Unity for beginners”. It introduces the overall features of C# and already shows how C# is used in Unity to create scripts and components. This tutorial is a good option to get started quickly without diving too deep into unnecessary parts of the programming language.
C++
The website LearnCpp.com provides a large list of text tutorials that teach you how to program in C++. It gives a comprehensive insight into the programming language with dedicated sections about object-oriented programming. Each section contains code examples demonstrating functionalities and there are also quizzes for testing your learned knowledge. A comment section underneath each tutorial can be used to ask questions.
You can learn how to program in C++ specifically for the Unreal Engine using their tutorial section. It helps with a quick start using C++ and the Unreal Engine. A number of example tutorials are also provided which can be tried to get to know different features in the engine and the programming language.
JavaScript
To get started with JavaScript, W3Schools offers a tutorial series which covers the different features of JavaScript and shows with examples how to use them. The course starts with core JavaScript features and later moves on to advanced topics and briefly covers other JavaScript libraries such as jQuery or how to use JSON or Web APIs with JavaScript. The site provides an interactive online code editor which can be used to explore examples and code snippets. The source code of these samples can be changed and preview window shows how the Web application behaves.
Mozilla also provides a brief beginner tutorial which gives an overview of the essential syntax and functionality in JavaScript.