Last week was my last C++ class. I finished my last class project and am now awaiting my final grade.

I’ve come a long way from “Hello World.” I know I’m not anywhere near the level of programmers I know and work with, but I when I got my last project to build without errors and work correctly I felt like a programmer.

There was a sense of creation and fulfillment working on my little programming projects. It was easy to see if they worked right and get immediate feedback when they didn’t. It felt like when I was little and trying to make the picture on the Lego box with the instructions. I could tell when I’d put the wrong brick in place  by just looking at the next page and I felt proud when I finished the build and got everything right. I’ll admit programming did leave me with that desire to take the program apart just so I could build it or something else again.

I have always found it interesting that they refer to different types of programming structures as programming languages. I understand that they each have their own syntax and way of doing things, much like spoken or written languages do. But learning C++ felt more like learning how to play with a different set of building blocks, then learning a new language.

I struggle with some concept of C++ during the class. Structures made sense, but Classes took me a good week and a half to understand. Vectors made sense in theory, but where tricky to use. I am by no means an expert in C++ now, but I think I can call myself a semi-fluent.