Question for all those pro peeps

Hey umm how long did it take u guys to get the hand of the actual language? cuz right now im no irritated, I am a newb, yes very much so, and I bought this book that is supposed to teach you from begining to learn how to make simple games... I read a c++ book b 4 that and it was sh*t, C++ for dummies, I realized that when every thing started to colapse, and the code was very badly stuctured. Now im on my second book, GAME PROGRAMING ALL IN ONE, and I am at around page 250, and it got a little too confusing, if ya know what I mean. Should starting to learn C++ be so much stress? I mean I keep forgeting what I read and its just all too complicated? what should I do plz? some one help me!!!!!

Ohh and uhh how long did it take ya guys :)

Do what you read. If they show you what the for loop does, go write a program using the for loop. If they teach you about pointers and arrays, write a program that uses them. That's the best way to learn, and things became unbelievably easy to understand once i started doing it.

Also, start small. A game is a fairly ambitious project, and it's easy to get discouraged or overwhelmed doing one when you first start programming.

For ideas, look at things you do on your computer every day - games you play, tasks you do, etc - and try to write a program dealing with those. For instance, i started learning C when i was a hardcore Quake 3 player. I decided to make a config creator/editor for Quake 3. I never finished it (got sidetracked by real life), but it was something i could handle and something i cared about.

I've been doing this for about 5 or 6 years now, where last year was spent doing it as a 9-5 job then coming home and doing it some more...

I'm now a professional programmer working for a very large software vendor. Before that I did a MEng in Computer Engineering which focused on Computer Science (my choice). That means I've been programming in C/C++ for about 6 years. There's still an AWFUL lot of stuff that confuses me - and I know it will continue.

As has been said, start small, even a medium sized project in C++ can become astonishingly tricky.

Take your time, and try to design your own projects - not just complete exercises from books etc.

HD

I dont find C++ hard at all. But learning it was tough scince i started learning it myself, with no help or no book. I tried modifying MFC projects built by AppWizard. Didn't get very far until I read the tutorial on the NET and got a decent book.

Good Luck :)

thanks yall, yeah it is kinda hard, to teach your self, plus get like 6 pages of homerwork, plus do sports, :( but yeah, I always thought never giving up was t he right choise :)

Don't know how long it took me to get a good grasp on the language. It built gradually. But I'm a quick learner, I guess it took me about 6 months to understand most of the C++ concepts. But I keep finding hidden parts of the Standard Library that I didn't know of.