Could a kid like me start

[367kGNh0]

I am sure you have stumbled upon one or two videos with a title like '12 year old programmer works for IBM' or '13 year old game dev making a fortune'.


Although i prefer to keep my age anonymous. With c++, hard work and commitment will it be possible i too, a student, could achieve something close to what these youngsters have? Can i make c++ something i can just refer to 2 hrs a day or is a c++ game something i need to work 24/7 on. I am a COMPLETE beginner and don't even know how to make a hello world program. but i have a libary with these 1999 c++ books and the internet ofcourse. so please, any experienced person, give it to me straight.

Will c++, alone, help me develop a simple, crisp google play mobile game, and how long will it likely take me, per day, to learn it and how much time will i need to work on it, per day.


P.s.s, if you have skype and wouldnt mind me asking a question here and there, please private message me.

p.s.s.s, how do you activate private messages?

[mbozzi]

With c++, hard work and commitment will it be possible i too, a student, could achieve something close to what these youngsters have?

Being a good software craftsman might be useful, but unfortunately, learning to program well won't make you rich nor solve the world's problems. Not on its own, anyways. That would be too simple.

But yeah, getting a job is a very reasonable goal.

Will c++, alone, help me develop a simple, crisp google play mobile game.

Google Play apps run on the Android platform, where the Java programming language is preferred. You can use C++ with the help of a component called the Android Native Development Kit, but this isn't ideal.

How long will it likely take me, per day, to learn it and how much time will i need to work on it, per day

You probably shouldn't worry about that and just work on learning at your own pace. This is mostly how I teach myself things.

Considering a introductory course, I might say that 10 study-hours/week seems reasonable. After a semester, a student should be able to write simple, short programs, but would struggle with code written by others and with larger projects. It's probably more difficult on your own, but I can't compare, since I didn't learn C++ in school. Maybe a year is enough to start writing "real" C++ programs.

You can learn the very basics of most languages in roughly an hour, but some other languages are much easier to learn. For example, Sussman and Abelson's brilliant introductory computer science book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs teaches most of the programming language Scheme in the first chapter. Admittedly, it's a difficult chapter.

How do you activate private messages?

If you are not signed in to the forum already, sign in, then click the following link. Select the check-box labeled "Private messaging enabled", then click the "Submit" button:
http://www.cplusplus.com/user/pm.cgi?w=options

[jonnin]

when I was a kid, talking 10-12, people my age were coding in basic and doing small, but somewhat interesting things already. I think there is an age below which you will not be able to understand a lot of things.... if you were, say, 7 years old, I would expect the concept of a binary tree to be overwhelming, and printing your name on the screen to be about right -- there are exceptions to this for exceedingly smart kids, but your typical 7 year old isn't really ready for prime time. By the time I was exiting high school at about 18, half my computer science class struggled a lot with sorting and run-time-complexity and the like. I remember that about 1/3 the class was unable to code up pascal's triangle printer, which is a fairly simple thing. I remember in college that not a one of my fellow students could understand my excel formula traveling salesman workbook. I am rambling with a point... its not your age; that genius 7 year old could have handled the TSP in excel after being explained better than the 22 year old 'at best average' peers I had. Being super smart is a huge lift, no doubt about it, being older helps up to a point, and hard work helps most of all. If it interests you, and you work hard, you can do a LOT. If you happen to be a hard working genius rugrat, youll do even better, but that is far from necessary.