Thread: The statement that could ruin my life.

I usually compare learning to program with learning to play a musical instrument. You wouldn't have to totally give-up your other activities become a good guitar player, but it would take some commitment. And, you might learn to play a simple song in a few weeks, but it's going to take at least a year before anyone wants to listen to you play.

Most professional programmers have a 4-year degree in computer science, math, engineering, or one of the traditional sciences.

Most of us here at cprogramming.com seem to be self-taught and self-learning students and hobbyists. But, there are quite a few computer science students and professional programmers too. (I'm in the middle. I've taken programming classes, but never a C++ class. I'm mostly a hobbyist, but I've written a few programs for work.)

The really bad news is that no matter how good you are at programming, you cannot write a commercial quality game by yourself. Commercial games have thousands of man-hours of programming, and thousands more man-hours of support/overhead time. Imagine a small team of 10 programmers working on a game for 2 years.... That's one person for 20 years!!! And, each member of the team has different skills and expertise. Microsoft's big programs have a few thousand man-years of programming. (I don't know if any games have that much effort behind them.)

Now the good news. A lone programmer can make an interesting game or other useful program. There are tons of "shareware" programs available on the Internet that are written and distributed by a single programmer.

[EDIT]
RTFL, Daved
Actually, I remember when I went back to "night school", another (married) student told me when he was "locked-up" studying he heard one of his kids ask "Mommy, where's daddy?" ...Yeah, a family can make "extra" activities more difficult.