Venturing into C Programming

The programming language that I use after mastering QuickBasic is C. At that time, I was thirteen. The main reason for switching from QuickBasic to C was simple, I've met the limitation of QuickBasic. I realized that with QuickBasic, I cannot really develop any high performance applications. I still remember, the PC that I used was a 80286 16MHz. And with QuickBasic, to produce a more graphical intensive applications is impossible.

The first C programming IDE I used was Turbo C++ Version 3.0. As you can predict, swithing from QuickBasic to C really need some hard work. Suddenly, I have to deal with a lot of new idea like header files, variable declaration, pointers, data types, and a semicolon after each syntax.

I cannot remember the two books that I used to learn C, but I remember one of it sounds like "Complete Reference of C Language", and the other sounds like "Game Programming Guru". I spent almost 6 months to learn the language before I can produce something useful. The "Game Programming Guru" help me a lot in mastering some important game programming concepts like double buffering, direct memory access and 3D engine development.

After confident enough with my skill, I decided to produce my first commercial application.



My first commercial application is a questions bank application to assist teachers to prepare test papers and students to do their revision.



The product was completed two years later when I was fifteen. I sold it to teachers and students in my schools and other schools nearby. I make almost 10K after three months. It was the first time I made money from developing application. The feeling was great!

Until today, C is still my preferred language in developing application. But of course, it is not the plain old C language that I use, it is C# that I use now.