Guys you are being real fredbills now :)
@Fred just ignore people who try to get you down, and do not give them a reason to get you down in the first pace. I think you are a good guy who will one day look back to your semi-r=trolling days and laugh.
@Everyone I am surprised to see how many people learnt to program at school and how few found it as a hobby.
Back when you still had to have *.h for header files, didn't have to do using namespace std; and if you didn't you weren't required to do std:: instead. Can't believe how much things have changed in almost 20 years.
.h versions of headers were in old C++ standard. Later as standard library grew, everything in it was moved in std namespace and new header version were introduced, saving old ones for backward compatibility. Note that support of these headers can be dropped in any moment (GCC isn't supporting iostream.h for example)
a) it has proper functions instead of macro (safer)
b) it is in std namespace, so no name collisions
c) support of long long, and other C++ types
d) cstdlib is direct port from C (with some neat C++ features). Other libraries have way more differences.
e) .h version of header can dissapear when you upgrade on newer compiler version
Back to the topic at hand, I came to programming when I was 10 and wanted to be a fantasy novel writer. I had this character that I had played pretend as since I was 7 or 8. He was the protagonist. Eventually I wanted to make a game out of it, so I asked my dad if he could teach me. He told me it's a lot harder than I thought it would be but that he would find me some resources. I started out with the free version of DarkBasic, didn't understand any of it, gave up and didn't touch anything programming related again until I was 14 or 15. That's when I got into C++. I actually joined this forum under a different account that year.
I started years ago with Python. Way back, before I began programming, my brain was going haywire, throwing all sorts of crazy ideas around like never before. One day, I took one of those mad ideas and decided to build a game with it. As you'd expect, it didn't go so well; painful, in fact. Ever since, I shifted from Python to Lua then to C/C++/x86-64 assembly.
Come to think of it, I haven't written in Python or Lua in years. I kinda' feel guilty now.
From my middle school years to my sophomore year in highschool, I went to school in an education system that was among the top 5 in the country. To put it in perspective: I had the opportunity to take the ACT/SAT in seventh grade.
I moved to Las Vegas during the summer before my junior year of highschool, and they were 2-4 years behind the curriculum I was taught.
I would say that it was a complete waste of time, that I learned absolutely nothing of applicable value there. Alas, I was so bored in trigonometry class, I figured out how to program my calculator to do my work for me, as I was sick of the monotony.
I loved it so much, I moved up to basic, which I loved even more, and have now been practicing C++ for about a year and a half now.
I major in computer science, and hope to obtain a master's, ad if necessary, a doctorate degree in the Science of Computer Science.
At 16 about 3 years ago. I got in, naively, wanting to make games or at least get into a field I like AND has good pay. Currently at a university, but still wanting to make games. So as my contingency plan I'm working on a library that could be used for games and other general high performance software that will probrably take me another year (with school) to be good enough for games or other software. If it doesnt work out at least I like Computer Science :).