Should I keep trying, or should I just give up now?

you just got to take it slow and mess around in basics java/c+ taught myself a bit in each of those and its relatively easy if you just take your time to look up everything you do and why its done that way. Don't give up to easy keep at it for a bit longer watch for the many tips you will see in this post and go from there!!!

As the above poster said, you have to take it slow. Some tips:

1. First off, don't try to jump into UDK. It's a very in-depth, advanced engine. Unity is way more appropriate; it's free, and very easy to pick up with guidance.

2. Try out the Walker Boys Studios tutorials. At least do the tutorials that teach you the Unity interface, as he does those well, albeit very slowly. The second "set" of videos starts to deal with actually programming in UnityScript. If it ends up being too much, you get overwhelmed, etc., move on to 3.

3. Start small and build up to learn programming. There are TONS of resources for learning a language (have you checked out the master programming sticky?). Ideally, you'd learn a less managed language like C to get all the nitty, gritty details; learning languages becomes a breeze after that, especially something that is highly managed like Java (it takes care of a lot of things for you like memory management).

If it's something that genuinely interests you, don't give up.

If you really want to work on games there are other areas you can work beside programming. You should get involved in something, a mod, a total conversion project, basically any game related project that needs volunteers to help. Then just do whatever you can do, no matter how trivial it might seem.

As long as you keep an open mind and good attitude, show you are willing to learn, I am sure most of the other people in the project would also help you.

Another thing you can do is prototype a game. You can do this with paper chits, or even an excel spreadsheet.

Basically just start creating something. Whether that is concept art, music, writing or proof reading, there are a lot of ways to contribute to a project. The benefits of doing this are that you will learn more about the process of making games and also have something to show to potential employers.

Please watch the video that is here:
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/9/28/3423172/valves-faliszek-tells-aspiring-developers-to-make-their-own-jobs-in

It was made for your question.

You want to know a little secret. I suck at math too and physics. Even at college when I had discrete math 1 and 2 I was so bad, I would barely pass the exam. But I had to force myself and try to teach myself, because all of my work depends heavily on math and physics. I'm now a software engineer / game programmer.

I love and hate my work at the same time. Ever day I need to solve a new problem and I get very excited and very bored at the same time. But adding new things to my project and watching my project grow little by little is worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job, I really do and I would not have it any other way. Except being an astronaut. But I have a feeling that this is off the table

Take things really slow. You can't just jump into game programming straight a way. It will get very overwhelming very fast and you will hate it. Start by learning the basics and try to create an application and try to print "Hello World !" or any text in that application. Then after you learn all the basics which is not hard at all, you can start game programming.

I assume you want to be a game programmer.

here try leaning C#. its very very easy language. after you learn that, you can create games using XNA which is again really easy. Here is a set of videos that teaches you all you need.
And as always if you need any help you can post it on this forum and me or any of the other members will help you.

BTW you don't need to learn all 200 videos. you can just watch till video number 30 and you will be ready to start game programming . However that is just the basics. and I would highly recommend that you watch all 200 video.
Edited by Fantasy - 10/23/12 at 3:04pm

Don't learn Basics, it ruins your brain...

Learn java! It'll help you learn other programming languages later on.
This guy is really good at explaining basic concepts:

http://www.youtube.com/course?list=ECFE2CE09D83EE3E28&feature=plcp

Then there is this guy for learning LWJGL:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19F2453814E0E315&feature=plcp

You might want to try J (jsoftware.com) - it's a programming language like no other. Its big advantage for learning is that it's interactive: as soon as you enter a line of code, you get a result. This immediate feedback is very helpful for figuring out how to use the language. The J forum also provides very good feedback to any question you may have and is friendly to new learners.

Have to agree with you here. I can't tell you the amount of times I've started on a new language or concept and given up in frustration because I've bitten off more than I can chew. If your new to programming entirely then there aren't many exciting projects you can work on which can again be discouraging. Concepts such as data types, data structures, algorithms and so many more that I can't be bothered listing are all very important but aren't at all that interesting.

If you're into gaming however I'd go with Java and Android to start off with. Java is easy and newbie friendly. Start off slow with Java and even slower with Anroid. GL