I started programming with QBasic, learning variables, arrays, loops, conditionals, and a basic introduction to functions, classes, objects, and OOP in C. My main goal was always game development, so I moved on to Godot and spent years making projects ranging from small games to more complex ones. I have collaborated with others, participated in and won a game jam, and learned topics such as shaders along the way.
Now I am working on a larger project and have encountered a performance problem that may require a C++ extension. That exposed gaps in my knowledge: I am not comfortable with memory management, pointers, structs, compilation, or what is really happening beneath the engine and scripting language.
I feel as though I skipped an important part of programming fundamentals and somehow managed to make games anyway. I am considering pausing Godot to study C++ properly, and I found LearnCpp.com, but reading it without practical projects feels difficult and boring.
What would be a good way to learn the missing fundamentals? Should I study C++ through small game or engine projects, use another language first, or learn computer architecture and assembly as well? Are there practical resources or exercises that pair well with LearnCpp.com?
3 Answers
You probably do not need to start over. Most of your existing programming knowledge transfers; the main new layer is understanding how compiled languages represent data and manage resources. Focus first on stack versus heap storage, pointers and references, object lifetime, structs and classes, value versus reference semantics, and RAII.
Use tiny standalone programs to practice rather than stopping game development completely. For example, write a dynamic array, a simple resource manager, or a small program using file and texture-like resources. Then try one very small Godot extension. Build with warnings enabled and use AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer so mistakes become visible. A useful milestone is being able to explain who owns every object and exactly when it is destroyed.
Keep using Godot for the parts you already enjoy and learn C++ alongside it. Rewriting an entire game in C++ is likely to bury you in engine and tooling problems instead of teaching the fundamentals.
LearnCpp is a solid reference, but give each section a concrete exercise. Make a command-line game, a small entity or component system, a fixed-size vector, and then a resizable container using standard library tools. Prefer modern C++ features such as std::vector, std::string, smart pointers, and RAII instead of beginning with C-style malloc and free. Understanding manual allocation is useful, but most application code should rely on safer abstractions.
If you want a deeper explanation of why these concepts exist, study the path from data representation to machine instructions, but do not make assembly a prerequisite for writing useful C++. A gentle computer-architecture course or a project such as Nand2Tetris can help explain memory, a CPU, assembly, and compilation from the ground up.
For the immediate performance problem, first measure it with a profiler and identify the actual bottleneck. Native code is not automatically the right fix, and moving code to C++ adds complexity. Sometimes the solution is batching work, reducing allocations, improving data layout, caching results, or changing an algorithm while keeping the gameplay logic in Godot.
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