I wonder why so many people get interested in game programming at some point in their adolesence, discover it is kind of a nightmare, and then give up?

I don't program games (although maybe one day I'll try to, and besides which, heck, I barely ever 'program&#39 but you will probably find that learning C++ is a good basis for understanding the syntax behind languages - most languages are quite like that. The syntax is the easy part, that could probably take a couple of days to master. What's hard though is actually making anything decent out of it.

You will probably want to then learn, if you're doing anything vaugely exciting, either SDL, OpenGL, DirectX or some combination to cover all your bases. You will then soon discover that learning one of those requires you to understand a lot of other concepts and very quickly you are going to be spending at least a few years on learning how to 'game program'. You won't make anything fun for a long time. You could go for one of those super high level languages like ActionScript that let you make games, and maybe that's a good idea for some sort of instant gratification, but bear in mind that Doom III wasn't made in ActionScript.

If I was to make one solid suggestion, I would say start small. Don't even think of games. Make your very own Hello World. The game programming industry is, at least right now, one hell of a sucker to get into. Or you could just ignore me, it's not like I'm the next John Romero.

Shall I sum that up? Ynot's right. It will take you a lifetime.

EDIT: And I'm not sure where Macs came into it, but stay the hell away. They are the devil in chrome.