This thread is a perfect example of why only experienced programmers should learn c++.

Not trying to start a holy war, c++ has its place, but the assumed knowledge to prevent shooting your own foot off is pretty high.

I was an experienced programmer when I started learning C++ years ago. I was never taught to use it properly as opposed to C. Either way, I still disagree.

Shogun.

A semi-serious issue with your code is that class objects aren't officially fully 'constructed' until you exit the constructor, so having your entire game loop within a constructor isn't a great idea - it might work, or might not. Chances are it'd probably usually work most of the time, but 'most of the time' isn't a good habit to get into with C++.
It's like playing Russian roulette - even if you have 1000 empty chambers, and only one chamber with a bullet in it, a smart programmer will tell you that that you shouldn't have any bullets in it, and a smarter programmer will tell you that it's better not to play Russian roulette at all.

Your main loop, in this case, should look like this:

int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
    game_app_t game; //No need to use dynamic allocation at all. 
    game.do_main_loop(); //Call 'glutMainLoop();' after your constructor has fully finished.
    return 0;
}

Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing now, except I didn't remove the dynamic allocation part though (will probably do that later), but now it looks like this:

int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
    game_app_t* app = new game_app_t();
    app->kick_off();
    
    return 0;
}

The pointer does get deallocated upon exiting because I used a function pointer passed to atexit() to ensure everything is released.

If that's also a bad idea, feel free to say so. I do appreciate everyone's advice. I'm learning something new from every response, and that's why I'm not afraid to make dumb threads!

Shogun

Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing now, except I didn't remove the dynamic allocation part though (will probably do that later), but now it looks like this:

int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
    game_app_t* app = new game_app_t();
    app->kick_off();
    
    return 0;
}

The pointer does get deallocated upon exiting because I used a function pointer passed to atexit() to ensure everything is released.

If that's also a bad idea, feel free to say so. I do appreciate everyone's advice. I'm learning something new from every response, and that's why I'm not afraid to make dumb threads!

Shogun

Dude please, stop programming C++ stuff and pick a book or read some of the C++ faqs or the new approaches about C++11, but you are programming like if you were doing a thing between Java and C.

I learnt C++ years ago too, but one month ago when I backed to do C++ stuff I knew I had horrible bad practices and I had to solve them, so I just picked a quick summary comparing old C++ with C++11, together with the faqs are linked in this thread and I achieve to get a big knowledge about the language itself.

I know I still have some problems which usually they are design related, but at least I don't have serious problems with stack/heap memory or using macros (language stuff related).

While I concur with looking heavily into C++11 features, and with studying when to use dynamic memory and when not to, I don't think he should stop programming C++. Learning is half study and half practice.

I've wrote lots of dumb pieces of code - unless you're taught by another programmer (which I wasn't) who happens to be very skilled, you can't code perfectly right away, you learn better and better practices continually. Or, at least, eight years later I still am tweaking my practices when I discover better ways of doing things. When I first started out, my code was horrible. But you grow through usage.

@blueshogun96: Here's a practice tip, if you want one:
Write your program without using any 'new'/'delete' (or 'malloc'/'free', or similar functions). Don't use smart pointers either (for practice).
Declare everything locally, or as member-variables of a local class. This removes globals, and it removes dynamic memory. Things like vectors and maps are perfectly fine though.

Once you finish a project like that, then in future projects when you *need* to use dynamic memory, use smart pointers instead of new and delete.