When I was younger I wanted to make games. I am currently 21 years old and I have become a generally very lazy person. I spend hours upon hours on the computer each day, and I've always been interested in programming, but I just play lots of games and watch videos, etc. Every once in a while I will get into a programming language and I will work with it for a few days or like a couple weeks or such. I just can't ever get the hang of it.
I always just find myself stuck not really knowing what to do. And sure there are many tutorials for everything online, but even if I follow tutorials, I just feel like I am copying text(not literally copying, but retyping what someone else provided) and I am not actually gaining much knowledge. All my life people keep asking what I want to do, who I want to be. I was never really sure, I never knew what I wanted. I am in community college and eventually a university, but I chose computer science as my degree simply because I know computers. I am on it all the time. I literally had no clue what I wanted to do so that is what I chose.
I've toyed with the idea of game development for years, but as I mentioned, I never got deep into it. It wasn't until just the other day I was playing a game and people were talking about how they are adding this and that, and such. And it just really got me thinking about how I wish I could be the one doing that. I wish I could have a creation.
So let me tell you about what I have tried:
C++ (tried Allegro, SDL, SFML, OpenGL)
Python
Java
Unity3D
Objective-C(iPhone development)
Basically I started my programming with C++ which was probably bad but I went through a lot of tutorials and learned a good amount of stuff, but I didn't know how to make it into anything. Of course I knew that for games you needed a graphics lib so I eventually found SDL, tried that, went onto Allegro, SFML, and even looked at OpenGL although I think that is way too advanced for beginning.
Then I tried diving into Python. My brother recommended it to me since it was an easy language. I was able to learn the basic way the language works. I went through most of the tutorials in the Learn Python the Hard Way series. Again, I had all this information but I didn't know how to make it into anything. I could divide some numbers or make a program that did some complex equations or whatever. That is boring.
I did some Java in High School but I pretty much forgot it all at this point.
Oh and for iPhone development I paid like $20 a month at teamtreehouse and they have good quality content, all videos that guide you through. But even after making a couple apps(again, I was just copying what I was told) I was left wondering how to create anything. Eventually I guess I just stopped doing it like everything else(this was more like within the past 6 months or so).
From time to time I will go back to C++ and try again, like I did today, but I am still lost. And since I have a little bit of memory of how the language works, I don't even know where to go because most tutorials are for people with 0 experience and it gets pretty annoying seeing all these operands and crap that are so basic.
I don't know, maybe I just am not putting in the effort. But that is with anything, I never really put in effort, and then I just go play games or whatever. That's why within the past few years all I have done is failed a couple classes and lose my job and just sit here depressed. All I am left with is very small knowledge of different languages and a couple C++ libraries. And then I go on youtube and see a 15 year old who makes a game that looks amazing. Why couldn't I be doing that at 15? 6 years further in life but still 10 steps behind.
Sorry for the long post but I just really don't know what to do.