Who am I?
I don't have much experience as a programmer in any kind of languages. You could say that I got serious in learning to become a programmer around the year 2007.
From 2007 until now I mostly spent my time reading about the theories regarding PHP OOP and PHP Zend Framework. I managed to get my hands dirty around 2008-2009 with Zend Framework but I haven't finished playing with it yet.
2010 I started to attend a night course in introductory C programming. This is the sum of my programming experience.
Goal
My goal is to become a ReactOS programmer. I realize that this will be a very long and exhausting journey. However I didn't plan to become a super-programmer that can understand, build and maintain operating systems. I let the smart people do all that heavy lifting.
I know stuff not related to programming that I want to contribute to the ROS community. But in order to present these stuff and ideas I basically have to find my way to the most inner circles. And to be able to present these ideas I need to speak the same language as them, I need to think on the same frequency as them. That's why I feel I HAVE to learn C no matter the cost.
(The Question) / Tactic 1
So my question is basically. What tactic do you recommend me, when it comes to learning and reaching that goal?
My tactic so far is this:
1. Attend introductory C programming night course and learn the basics for C.
2. Buy this C++/Win API book to learn how to make games: Beginning Game Programming
3. Then do some easy ROS work like: finding bugs, fixing bugs, translations, etc. etc.
What do you think about this tactic? Will it work for me?
- The thing I'm worried about is that when I dive into that 600 page book on how to make games with C++. Dedicating years of my life on C++ will going back to C be easier or harder for me? Since it's ReactOS' primary language.
- I browsed through that book in a store and liked how the author teaches things step by step for newbies. I already have books like K&R which the WINE people recommended me. But it's too technical written for me to even understand half of it. And technical books like that don't inspire me.
- This is my dilemma do I have to suffer through non inspiring technical C books to reach my goal. Or will inspiring C++ game programming books help me reach that same goal?