Hey everyone. I've been programming C++ for a little while now and feel comfortable enough with the language to start getting into some more serious programming. Problem is that I've got no idea where to go. I'm not sure if I should try some Win32 programming or some other alternative libraries like SDL or maybe something completely different. The main problem is that I really don't have any idea what each of these routes entails and what I can accomplish with each of them. So... any suggestions? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,

What do you want to do, precisely? If you want to make games, SDL will probably be more immediately useful than Win32.

Heh, yeah, that might help =P. Yes, I'm interested in making games. However, you said that SDL would be more "immediately useful." Does this mean that it won't be all that useful farther down the line? I'd rather take the time now to learn something that I can use for a long time than to take a bunch of intermediate steps that I won't end up using all that much.

Thanks for the reply.

Quote:Original post by AristeDoes this mean that it won't be all that useful farther down the line?

You're not going to build spreadsheets in SDL. Neither will you have access to the dark recesses of the operating system - at least, not through SDL alone. You will, however, have access to the bits that really matter to make a game.

Essentially, if you want to learn game programming using Win32, you'll pretty much start by reimplementing the stuff that SDL does for you. Is that extra control worth the hassle? Who knows... In fact, probably not: SDL is open-source, so once you've mastered it you can start digging around the library internals and extend it as suits you - learning the relevant bits of Win32 along the way.