For the last half year or so, I've been trying to decide what programming language should be my first to learn, and one day, somewhere in November last year (2016) I started to learn C++.

What next

In my next coding posts, I'll present some of the recent personal projects that I've been working on, as a learning exercise. But first, let me tell you my story :)

It's important to create the right environment when coding, doing something creative or working in general :)

Why C++?

Even if it's an old language, it is still very much used everywhere. My bf gave me a Particle Photon as a present half year ago, because it's fun to code, you can connect many things to it (sensors, speakers, lights etc.) and that got me curious. I needed to know C++, so I just learned a few commands at the beginning, then took a break from it because it was becoming too difficult and couldn't understand it.

So I went all the way to the basics

I wanted to learn about machine code first. I played with assembly language 6502 and 68k and it was really fun and challenging. Then I read and watched many interesting videos about computer history. Just so you know, history in general is my worst enemy, but in this situation it fascinated me! I found out about the most famous computers that changed the world in old times (some of them still change the world!). My favorites are Commodore SX64, Commodore Amiga 500 and BBC B Micro.

After all this, I finally got a grasp of how a computer works, the logic of coding and realized how small I am in this world :) And here we go, I installed Visual Studio, found a good library - Allegro - to help me draw some lines, maybe make a sound, save an image, simple things like that as a beginning.

And then?

And then, after a few months of frustrations, explosive anger, crying in the corners, confusions, 10 hairs less on my head, most nails eaten and a few wonderful successes, I managed to get the basics of my first learned language C++! The hardest thing was getting the logic of it, and that you have to consider every little detail of how your program works, even the most meaningless ones. And to celebrate, I got my first working desk and a really cool computer, that finally has enough power to handle all the animations/demos I make :)

But it's all worth it!

Through pain we evolve, or at least I did :) 1 year ago I'd never think of coding as one of my main focus, mainly because I was an artist, creating abstract, handmade stuff that had nothing to do with a computer. But now I found out that animations are complicated but very interesting to code, so I've been working on several demos for the past few months.