I've been doing the things out of books for years. I found that I have huge issues thinking of ideas to program and when I do I have even more trouble breaking it down through the steps of idea, pseudo-code, actual code (and whatever steps are in between each). I wanted to program video games and went to college thinking it would teach me what I was lacking in to become better at programming. It didn't. I now have a degree in game and simulation programming and still feel like I'm no where near being a game programmer. Console apps are fine for me (currently coding an address book just for the heck of it). It drives me nuts because I know the language pretty good from all the reading, but can't figure how to overcome my issue of designing it from thought/idea to final design. I'm fairly certain if I had that in place I'd be good to go. Is there anything I can do to help with this? All I ever got at Allegro and Moosader sites were "just code" like it would just suddenly remedy itself if I spent hours fighting the same problem.
(I have this on cplusplus.com too to try and widen my advice consumption range).