Well, being an AMX guy myself, I think the biggest thing I can say to someone just starting is to not get overwhelmed. In truth, most AMX programming you will ever do is pretty simple. There are lots of complicated ways to do the simple things that can save you many lines of code and typing, but they don't necessarily work "better", they just make the code-jockey more efficient.

Ultimately, its all just a big "If-Then" statment, or actually many IF-Then's. So if X occurs, then do Y. X may be a button press on a TP, traffic into an RS-232 port, a pulse on a contact closure, or a time-based event. Y can be sending an IR code, flipping a TP to a different page, sending an RS-232 command, or even closing a relay.

Keep it simple, don't let yourself over complicate things and you'll do fine. It is true though that some people "get" programming in a text based language, and others don't.

Brad