   What the...?
  This might sound a little stupid, and it probially is, but I need to ask this. I love programming. I have been doing it in VB and C++ for about 3 years now combined. The problem is when I try reading online at message boards or in books about programming it feels like you need to be a genious to understand most of it. My biggest problem in that I want to program for a career. If I can''t even understand you people how in the hell can I expect to make a career out of this? Next year is my Senior year of High School and I havent even started planning my life yet. Im at the border point right now where if I fail one more class I dont graduate on time. I dont know what that means for college but it probially wont be good. Is there anything at all you can reccomend for me? Im starting to get really nervious. I mean I dont even know alot of C++. I can do basicially anything in a beginners C++ book, not everything, but alot of it. That took me a year to accomplish. Am I just giving myself false hope?   Learning C++ was hard. Trying to relearn C++ sucks. Hopefully I remember everything and learn it right this time. 
  Give it time. ;  i''d concetrate on getting out of school first personaly and worry about the rest of ya life later As for C++, if you go on to do a programming degree then they will teach you it, so dont worry about it too much, i didnt learn it until was 18 and at 23 i''m now a programmer earning a fair wage (and still learning C++ as i go).As far as life plans go, i didnt have any, maybe i was lucky, but i drifted and got where i wanted to be, so as long as you are moving in the direction you want to go i wouldnt stress about it too much ;  Phantom_ What did you major in at college? Also what type of programming job do you have? Is it casual or a set job? What type of stuff do you do? ;  I assume for ''college'' you are refering to 16-18 education (dont have a major-minor system in the UK at that level), i did Maths, Electronic and BiologyIf your refering to 18+ education then i did BSc(Hons) Software Engineering, however due to external factors i failed (thus my later luck factor)My current job is working for CSports.net, full time, as the backend programmer (applications which collect data from all the game servers), i work with C++ atm and its mostly a matter of finding the fastest and most stable way to process text based data.might not seem as great as making games  however it has its challenges and does have some intresting side bits of research i could take (for example, i''d like to intergate some form of AI into the system to deal with badly formed data and changes in server return data, instead of me having to do the leg work).All in all a stable job, pays reasonable well (£24,000 pa, which works out at about $45,000 pa) and still gives me room to experiment and learn on the job ;  I am in the same position with  _the_phantom_ for the most part.I had experience with mainly vb, in high school and I almost failed graduation.  Well thats with everyone else though, but anyway then once I went to school(tech school like ITT tech) this is where I learnt "how" to program.  From finishing up school and getting the basics in, I am now a .NET programmer, I am 21 years old.  But I had a little luck on my side, and I made choices that put me in this job that I have now.  As of now I am learning a lot everyday and I am covering many areas of programming.  I am doing what I wanted to be doing, I never really wanted be become a game programmer full time, just as a hobby, so it stays fun.What I think you should do is finish HS on time, from the looks of it you wont get into a uni or or expensive college, but dont let that stop you.  After your done with HS( this is very important, I didnt see it till after graduation how important it was to finish so work really hard ) then you can start taking classes on programming and get your general ed classes in.  Then you can move up to a better college that will give you a BS in CS if you want to go that route, but you will learn how to program in college.  I didnt want to goto college right after HS, I didnt feel like I was ready, I didnt want to take all the general ed classes, but my story is very different from anyone elses, but I will be going back to college to get my BS, my goal is a Ph.D over a long period of time, but min of a BS.  So far I have meet every goal that I came up with and that is how you keep your spirits up.email me if you have anymore questionstek2001x@hotmail.com ;  I don't think that you can learn C++ just from reading a book... I think the best thing to do is to come up with some idea for a program or a game, then go ahead and try to program it. As you go along you will no doubt run into problems/things you don't know how to do. And each time that happens if you just do a search on the net and try to find the solution yourself, if that fails then ask on the forum (don't do that too often or people will get anoyed with you).At the end of it you will probably end up with a really badly written program, but that doesn't matter hopefully you will have learnt from your mistakes. Then you can set yourself another task trying to write something completely different but try to plan it out better from the start.This way i think you will have a much better understanding of why things are done certain ways, and will remember everything a lot better than if you tried to read from a book.Having said that, you're going to have to have at least a basic knowledge of C++ or you won't have a clue where to start. There are plenty of tutorials online for that, www.gametutorials.com for example.PS: Don't expect to be able to be able to do it in a few months, it will probably take at least 1 year before you feel like you know what you are doing.   [edited by - SpaceDude on February 10, 2004 7:52:22 PM];  Thrust... two things, first, dont listen to phantom in my opinion... the more experience you can get in the field, the better, and dont worry about bein a super programmer in one month, "give it time" ittl come to you with if you are persistant, and if you love programming you should be willing to give that kind of time, it may be frustrating (i know gettings started for me was INCREDIBLY frustrating... i took compscience 110 introduction to programming to get my feet off the ground, helped an unbelieveable amount, from there gamedev and books were all i needed... it may be the way you should do it 