Where've I Been?

My efforts to master the programming language C++ have come to a halt. Already made, playable video games have come in the way of creation and learning. In other words, I'm seriously distracted playing Final Fantasy IX . Don't hate. Final Fantasy IX is my favorite Final Fantasy out of the other Final Fantasies I've played: Final Fantasy V/III (not sure), Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy XII. There are a lot of things I didn't do when I was beating Final Fantasy IX the first time I played. The last time I played, I didn't completely evolve Chocobo. Yes, if you didn't know, you can evolve your Chocobo to walk over mountains and I suspect Chocobo will eventually evolve to fly. Besides not evolving Chocobo, I didn't try to gain all magical/physical abilities in the game through items. I'm doing that now with the help of handy dandy game shark cheats.


About C++. I still remember all the basic stuff: loops, ifs, functions, and inheritance. Anyone If a total noob is reading this post for advice, the best advice that a total noob can get is that computer languages are just languages. You use the language to speak to the computer to get the computer to do what you want. You can translate computer language into plain English. Programming in plain English would take much longer. Languages like C++ are much more concise. There are, however, computer languages that are almost plain English. I think BASIC would be an example of a computer language that is almost just English.

Another very important topic to understand is API (Application Programming Interface). API is code derived from a library of code. You can't use C++ alone to make programs that involve graphics. Well, you can, but you'd have to start from scratch, but thanks to programming libraries you don't have to. Allegro is a programming library. A bunch of more knowledgeable programmers than I am made this library, pretty much from scratch. A programmer can download Allegro and use its public functions and other public stuff within the library. (google: declaring public or private functions in C++) Whatever you use from the library is called the API.