Back to the basics

While I've been essentially learning how to program games for about 2 years, most of that time was spent in high-level scripting oriented languages that handled so many of the nitty-gritty details for you.

When I first moved into c++ about 6 months ago, I moved very quickly to do that same type of programming I had done before. I knew how classes worked in other languages and started making and messign with them in c++. While much more followed, I quickly realized there were so many ways that I was simply abusing the living shit out of the language. My code is horribly sloppy and while it does produce some neat output, I am not very proud of what is going on behind it.

With this in mind and my new programming classes starting up at school, I've decided to go "back to the basics." I'm running through my massive c++ book and doing as many excercises as I can. All my free time is going to be devoted to doing as much practice of traditional programming techniques as possible. So this means that production on my 2d game is going to stop as I run drill after drill after drill. Hopefully I can get back to the game in about a month or so.

While the basics bore me, I know that all good programmers have to go through this "hitting the grind stone" phase. Tons of material and problems that are incredibly boring but will honestly pay off in the end.

So all free time for the next 2 months or so is basics, basics, basics. I'm not gonna freakin stop for anything.