Links to source code databases, please help my career

Hello all you talented programmers. This is my first post and will definitely not be my last. I am 23 and have always been interested in everything computers and my career is supposed to be in computer networks, or anything related. However, its a take what you can get job market and im still looking for work in my field. so i decided to learn some new skills to go with my career.

I've always been scared of learning to program, i just couldnt really get into it so i never pursued learning. but i am forcing myself because not only do i love making games (only game maker though) but learning C++ at home will help me immensely in the job market compared to not knowing anything about programming to begin with. I think i _can_ do it, but im having a hard time learning off books and tutorials by myself.

I learn best from examples, i found thats the best method for me, looking at a complete program source code, studying and modifying it and learning new functions, etc. I seen a few examples in the source section on this site and they been helpful, but because i learn best from examples i need huge archives and databases worth of codes to keep looking through. Here is an example of the kind of stuff im looking for: here.

So now that you have heard my life story maybe you have other suggestions for what im looking for. But if not im basically looking for an archive or database with just tons of code examples i can look at. starting out with simple programs with comments would be extremely helpful. Im so sorry if this gets asked a lot, i tried doing a search but it was kind of broad and didn't really find what i was looking for.

Seriously thank you all so much!

I am rather sceptical of this approach as there are many poor examples out there, and you will have trouble discerning the good from the bad at this point. Furthermore, even good code may use compiler extensions that might bite you later if you assume that they are portable, and in your experimentation you may experiment with code that results in undefined behaviour, but be none the wiser since it appears to work.

• Buy a book or two or three or more and read them.
• Code.
• Crash the computer a lot.
• Learn from it.
• Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you want to look at other people's code, you can browse projects on SourceForge.net: or other similar sites and try to work through what they've done.