What Do We Really Program?

[EbonySeraphim]

I think we all know that PBASIC and the the autonomous code for the robot isn't really programming. I was just wondering what you people actually program in terms of language, how long have you been programming, and what type of applications/project you work on? I just wanna know people's histories and possible futures.

I guess I'll start with myself:
I started programing at age 7 in ASM...ha ha jk. It was actually age 7 in BASIC on some IBM. Did that for a year, stopped, then picked up summer after my freshman year in C/C++. I learned C officially first, but then moved on to C++. At a lower level(meaning basic programs), there really isn't much of a difference between the two languages. After about a year(end of sophomore year) of just programming boring console apps in C++ I started to move into Windows programming using the Win32 API so I could make more useful and user friendly programs and later games. Then after finding out that not much window's programming is needed for games, I pretty much dropped the books I checked out of the library and got game programming books. I started with the basics of Direct3D but couldn't go to far being that most early tutorials needed capabilities of a graphics card that I didn't have. Then I moved back to DirectDraw and have been doing that for almost 2 years now. I also touched on OpenGL but don't have any plans on learning it until after Direct3D(I have a better graphics card now). Of course, in addition to graphics games require input so learning DirectInput was necessary.

I've also looked at the basics of Java, C#, and ASM to get a better understanding of what is going on outside of my world. It's not too different. But it's easier out there. I think that if you can write a good application in C/C++, moving to Java or C# shouldn't be too hard.

If you couldn't tell from the history, I'm hoping to be a game programmer in the future. I'm not ignoring things outside of the language and I hope to learn to make some general Windows Apps in C#. I have done a few in C++ using the Win32 API, but that was a lot of code for very little functionality. I'd prefer not to use MFC(Microsoft Foundation Classes) because I generally like to have utter control of what goes on in a program.

Now it's your turn to brag about yourself.