[quote name='nfries88' timestamp='1303958056' post='4803812'] [EDIT: Do not read any books that claim to teach you a programming language in any amount of time less than a year. You cannot possibly learn C++ well enough to write anything of use in 21 days unless you've already been programming for a good amount of time. Even a year is pushing it.

No, do not BELIEVE any books that claim to teach you a programming language in any amount of time less than a year. However, after 3 days I was able to make something similar to MSPaint. Yes, you can learn c++ in 21 days. However, you will not be able to put it to much use unless you've practiced. Sam's teach yourself series are GREAT books with misleading titles, that's all. I believe the classic "Don't judge a book by it's cover" saying can be put to it's proper use here.
[/quote]

Three days to make a fully functional MSPaint-like program? That's highly unlikely even after decades of programming (unless it's for 72 hours straight or something, and even then it's unlikely).

...OR, did this book give you the full source code for an MSPaint program and you just built it and felt all happy and accomplished and decided that programming was easy if you just use everyone else's code? Guess what. Open Source isn't writing any masterpiece games, so you're not going to be a very successful game developer that way.