I’ve been doing some spring cleaning and de-cluttering my house. I’ve got a ton of crap to get rid of that I’m sure someone else would be able to use. As I was going through my old stuff I found C++ Programming 101. It was the first book I got on the language back in 1995 (give or take) after I realized that learning QuickBASIC or Pascal wasn’t going to cut it if you wanted to really code games. I was pretty studious because I wanted to program games like Wolfenstein or Commander Keen and idolized the genius of the people that did, which I guess means I idolized John Carmack back in the day even though I didn’t know it. Now it’s 2010. I’m in the games industry. I guess it paid off.
While I was pulling all my scraps of paper out of that book, I came across a list of goals I had jotted down for myself. Things I wanted to accomplish to further my programming education. Here’s the list:
1. Study C++ Programming 101 Book and understand [it] all.
2. Do good in math and science classes at school (review information on subjects too)
3. Take a college course on C++ or C programming (Chester County College) — if I can get in one. or take in high school next year
4. Study Game Programming Books (2D, 3D, animation, etc)
5. More on Computer Graphics
6. Study Assembly or machine language
I did take a college course but in Pascal one summer. I remember spending summers learning 3D programming at home. I remember how to get mode 13h which is the 320x240x256 VGA mode that Wolf3D used. I also remembered that for the longest time I couldn’t do that because I only had an EGA monitor and begged my folks for a better computer.
I still keep goals for myself. Projects I want to accomplish and yes, I do actually accomplish them. Hopefully in a few weeks I can relate the thing I’m doing now.
Tags: c++ programming, nostalgia
