I've been on Godot Forums for a little less than a month but I randomly found this discussion and thought I might as well make a post.
I got in to programming when I was around 8 or 9 years old, and by "got in" i mean I wanted to learn to code but apparently didn't have the brain capacity to do so. I watched YouTube videos about Lua programming in Roblox, and I did exactly what the tutorials told me to do, and I ended getting stuff to work only about half the time. I wasn't really learning to code, I was just copy and pasting whatever the tutorialist did. Not a single time during the 2 years when I was trying so hard to learn to code games in Roblox did I actually understand why the code worked. I couldn't edit or write my own code if my life depended on it, even if it was extremely simple. The most simple and standard programming terms never rang a bell with me, because I literally never knew how to use them and did not know what they were. I couldn't have told you what a variable or an if statement or a loop or literally anything meant. If you think in those 2 years I had to have at least learned something, anything, then it would dishonest to say I did.
I was in the exact same place I started, and I was upset with my failure and put programming back on the shelf. After that I began to stray from Roblox, mostly because I was simply just maturing, but also because of my failed attempt at learning to code. A few months later I found out there was a local coding club at the library, and I decided to give it a shot. I arrived and they set me up with a computer and launched Scratch on it. I had heard of Scratch before, but never used it. At this point I was frustrated because I wanted to learn coding, REAL coding. I didn't wanna connect some drag and drop digital blocks to make the worlds lamest program. After that one meeting I left and didn't ever go back, little did I realize that Scratch was actually the gateway that would manage to sink those basic concepts in to my stupid brain.
I tried a python class in 6th grade, but the only thing I learned was how to run, print("Hello World"), and I bailed out of the class. Anyway another year or 2 goes by and I'm in 8th grade, I try a different programming class and guess what, we're using Scratch, but this time I wasn't so closed minded and didn't instantly turn it down. Throughout the trimester those programming concepts began to sink in and finally make sense. I realized that Scratch was much more capable than I originally thought. I made a few random projects and by the end of the trimester I finally had something to show for it! I made a simple tower defense game, a street fighting game, and a top down shooter style war game. I felt good about it, but just like a crippling addiction, the soft stuff began to slowly not satisfy me anymore, and I turned to the internet to find something stronger and more powerful, that would produce the same dopamine hits I used to get from Scratch.
I tried Unity and failed miserably. I tried Unreal but my laptop didn't meet its hunger for 4 petabytes of RAM, and it was cursed to only run at 4 FPS. I was introduced to Godot when I saw some YT videos about it in my recommendations, but marked it off as not being worth it, because all the youtubers seemed like they were in some sort of Godot worshiping cult. But then Unity decided to light itself on fire and lose the trust of its entire indie user base, and it seemed like everybody quickly migrated to Godot. People starting talking about how great Godot was and I decided it wouldn't hurt to download it and see what it was like and boy, it did not disappoint.
I learned the basics of Godot and here I am now. That is the story of how I joined the Godot cult. I'm honestly embarrassed that it took so long for me get off the ground. I'm working on a 3D angry birds clone and a few other small projects. I also am currently programming in Python and learning a few other languages, and am enrolled in an IT course, and plan to enter the Tech industry and get filthy rich programming stuff.
At one point, my life plan probably was to make the next billion dollar Video Game franchise, But now that I have matured, I realize that people tell the success stories of indie developers who quit their jobs and get rich, but never the the stories of people who do the same thing and end up flopping. Which is why I'm content just being a hobbyist game developer for now. I could jump on to the already crowded Gaming industry train the second I get out of high school, or I could jump on the Tech train and get a strong financial foundation, and possibly jump on the Gaming train somewhere down the track if I feel like it. Not to mention my parents might disown me.
Sorry that this is so long, I just started typing and somehow ended up writing an entire essay about my programming journey and the entire sequence of events that led to me discovering Godot.
