What interesting things can I make using C++?

[abdalimran]

I have been learning C++ for 8-9 months. But actually I am not being happy with it. I can't feel the happiness of creating useful and interesting programs using it. I just use it to solve the online judge problems nothing more.

I also know Python. At this stage I could make many interesting programs using Python, I made some simple web crawlers which grabbed informations for me. I made simple GUI applications using tkinter and I could make many other interesting and useful stuffs using python.

But I can't make such things using C++, or may be its harder in C++.I know C++ is a very powerful and fast language. C++ is used to create high performance softwares. But I am getting bored with C++ for just solving problems.

I need suggestions, what interesting and useful stuffs can I make using C++?

Is my learning approach is wrong that I only solve problems using C++?

[TarikNeaj]

Maybe you could try making games? I found that super fun.

I recommend using SFML. Its great for that, you can build your own game engine and create your own game :)

http://www.sfml-dev.org/

[Peter87]

Try use some library.

GUI:
Qt: http://qt-project.org/
wxWidgets: http://www.wxwidgets.org/

Game/multimedia libraries:
SFML: http://www.sfml-dev.org/
Allegro: http://alleg.sourceforge.net/
SDL: https://www.libsdl.org/

[TarikNeaj]

@Peter87. Out of curiousity. Is there any reason one should use SDL over SFML for example?

[Peter87]

I don't know. I have only used SDL.

[TarikNeaj]

I tried Using SDL, but it was just really old and I heard it hasnt been updated since 2009? And its for/written in C? SFML just looked much better and fresher.

[anup30]

_{TarikNeaj wrote:}

I tried Using SDL, but it was just really old and I heard it hasnt been updated since 2009? And its for/written in C? SFML just looked much better and fresher.

SDL:
Initial release 1998; 17 years ago
Stable release 2.0.3 / 16 March 2014;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer


http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1tsz5w/sfml_21_vs_sdl2/

[TarikNeaj]

Thank you @anup30. Cleared things up.

[anup30]

lazyfoo's SDL tutorials are new.
http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/index.php

[TarikNeaj]

A lot of people were saying SDL C-ey while SFML is more C++-ey. Also sfml is exactly what it says, simple and fast. I like it very much, no real reason to use SDL I think.

Also, I did check out SDL before checking out SFML, but when I checked out their tutorials, it was still kinda old, must have been before they updated it.

[Peter87]

TarikNeaj, I see you are one of those people that think old == bad. Why change something that ain't broken?

[TarikNeaj]

I dont think that at all. Ive always used the "if it aint broken, dont fix it". I just like sfml. And its true that SDL is more c-ey, while sfml is more c++-ey. And I prefer c++. Thats all.

[anup30]

_{TarikNeaj wrote:}

SDL is more c-ey

well, SDL won't use classes for rendering the game in screen - that's not a problem. you can still use all C++ features in your SDL game (logic, calculation etc.)
probably its matter of personal taste.
lets see some comparative info between them (from Wikipedia):

SDL:
SDL is extensively used in the industry in both large and small projects.
Over the years SDL was used for many commercial and non-commercial video game projects, for instance MobyGames listed 120 games using SDL in 2013[28] and the SDL website itself listed around 700 games in 2012.[29] Important commercial examples are Angry Birds[30] or Unreal Tournament, from the open source domain OpenTTD,[31] The Battle for Wesnoth[32] or Freeciv.[33]
The cross-platform game releases of the popular Humble Indie Bundles for Linux, Mac and Android are often SDL based.
SDL is also often used for later ports on new platforms with existing legacy code, for instance the PC game Homeworld was ported to the Pandora handheld[34] and Jagged Alliance 2 for Android[35] via SDL.
Also, several non video game software uses SDL, examples are the emulators DOSBox and VisualBoyAdvance.
There were several books written for the development with SDL (see further readings).
SDL is used in university courses teaching multimedia and computer science, for instance, in a workshop about game programming using libSDL at the University of Cadiz in 2010.
Software developers can use it to write high-performance computer games and other multimedia applications that can run on many operating systems such as Android, iOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and other platforms.


SFML:
SFML is primarily used by hobbyist game developers and startup companies consisting of several developers at most. Because SFML does not necessitate writing large amounts of code, it has been adopted by many Ludum Dare participants as well.[13] Compared to older libraries such as SDL and Allegro, the SFML user base is relatively small but growing. At the time of this writing (4 March 2015), its GitHub repository has been starred by 1968 users.[14]
SFML has been used in teaching at universities and scientific projects as well.
SFML is free and open-source software provided under the terms of the zlib/png license.
It is available on Windows, Linux, OS X and FreeBSD.