Reply to Re: Ludum Dare (again!)
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Something like Lua/Löve is probably a pretty decent place to start. I haven't used Löve much myself (and didn't enter the LD, alas), but I'm at a stage where I feel fairly cozy about using it, so if I want to do something I haven't tried before, learn-it-as-you-go isn't too much of a hair-pulling experience. It's probably a bit more complicated than learning DinkC, but not too much.
If your primary interest is in creating games, I think that using a platform like that, that is specifically designed for making games, is definitely the way to go. (There are a ton of those, with varying levels of complexity. Ruby, which KrisKnox mentioned, is the scripting language for Game Maker, IIRC?) After you're good with that, if you feel like it, you can move to learning a "real" programming language and it'll be a lot easier then, thanks to the things that you already know.
If you start learning something like C++ from scratch, it'll be a while before you get to the stage where you're actually writing dialogue, or doing anything else that directly relates to a game. As such, it can be a rather discouraging experience of trudging through dung you don't really give a dang about, and it's difficult to motivate yourself through that.
If, on the other hand, you *want* to learn programming in general, that's a different matter. Just google "Learn C++ in 30 days" or something, and start reading. School is a piece of crap. Whatever you can learn at school, you can learn yourself at home in a fraction of the time.
What learning things on your own DOES require, though, is a little bit of initiative and the determination to stick with it. Contrary to popular sentiment, learning isn't fun. (The fun part is succeeding at writing code - not the part where it doesn't work and you can't figure out why)
If your primary interest is in creating games, I think that using a platform like that, that is specifically designed for making games, is definitely the way to go. (There are a ton of those, with varying levels of complexity. Ruby, which KrisKnox mentioned, is the scripting language for Game Maker, IIRC?) After you're good with that, if you feel like it, you can move to learning a "real" programming language and it'll be a lot easier then, thanks to the things that you already know.
If you start learning something like C++ from scratch, it'll be a while before you get to the stage where you're actually writing dialogue, or doing anything else that directly relates to a game. As such, it can be a rather discouraging experience of trudging through dung you don't really give a dang about, and it's difficult to motivate yourself through that.
If, on the other hand, you *want* to learn programming in general, that's a different matter. Just google "Learn C++ in 30 days" or something, and start reading. School is a piece of crap. Whatever you can learn at school, you can learn yourself at home in a fraction of the time.
What learning things on your own DOES require, though, is a little bit of initiative and the determination to stick with it. Contrary to popular sentiment, learning isn't fun. (The fun part is succeeding at writing code - not the part where it doesn't work and you can't figure out why)
