Gekkonen

Don’t learn C++ before C. C++ is a massively more complex language whereas C, once you understand the fundamentals, is quite simple.

If you want to work with projects that use C++, then by all means.

Honestly not a bad idea. It would be possible to automate with some API too…

First: Great that you’re motivated to learn this stuff! When it comes to programmers I’ve worked with, usually the best ones are those who learned programming to do something for FOSS or wanted to create a thing themselves.

Second: If you’re planning on university, an IT degree doesn’t hurt. You’ll learn a lot of stuff that -can- be useful. At the same time you don’t need one.

Practically though, start learning a programming language that is relevant to one of the projects you care about. If you want to learn programming in general, start with Python for a very easy introduction to the basics. If you want to learn more about how computer work (you should), learn C. For learning programming, I recommend books instead of websites, especially if you learn a system level language like C.

Once you’ve learned a bit of programming - apply it! Go through the bugtracker of the software you use, and find a bug someone has already solved. Read what the bug was about, then read what changes were made and understand why that fixed the bug. The most important practical skills for a programmer are reading other people’s code (especially for what you want to do) and debugging. Remember that the most common question a programmer asks is not “how do I do this” but “how does this work?” Another common one is: “WHY does this work?”

But you may also be able to contribute without programming. Many of the software you use requires people who understand how the operating system works to configure it, package the software, and help others like you to solve problems. All of this can be done without much understanding of programming if you spend some time to get familiar with the manual of your software and how the software interfaces with your operating system.

Good luck!

For your own list, I recommend keeping the data as simple as you can and building tools on top of that, if you’re able.

I’ve kept my eye on Ixion but did not realize its gameplay was that kind of decision making. I’ll put it on my to-play list. Yes I have a list for that too.

I do love it for many reasons, although I do also recognize it has its share of bad puzzles that are now mostly gone from the modern era of Point & click games.

Mostly it’s a lot of notes taken over a long time, then going through the older games which were mostly physical copies (and thus still in my storage). Also I think I have better memory than most people, at least for things I care about.

There’s a lot of games I’ve played and forgotten, although those were often games I tried and gave up on.

Also the played date on many games is just first day of the year as I later remembered “oh yeah, I played this game around that time” and put it on the CSV. Often me playing a game comes with some other memory: “Yeah we played this with that friend when he was back from the military” and so on, which allows me to binary search the years.

My genre definitions are pretty loose. I simplified & combined lots of categories in my CSV data when I wrote the statistics tool, but honestly there are lots of games that are either genre-defining or so different from anything else that I’ll just give them their own genre. I hate to use something like “platformer” or “action adventure” as that hardly tells anything about what kind of game it is. What genre is Undertale?

Hardspace: Shipbreakers is a dad game to me because it’s the kind of game a dad might play after coming home from work, feel like they’re doing something useful, with visual signs of a job well done, wrap it up and still have time for their kids. I think this is similar to films like Grayhound where we watch a hero who does his best to maintain a stalwart face, endures hardship, inspires, maybe has a weak moment but pulls through and keeps everyone protected until finally coming home and falling asleep when the job is done. This is what I describe as a dad fantasy.

Dad simulator is just Octodad, and I think I might want to make a category for “humor” or “parody” games instead.