How difficult is C++???

[hibikir]

I'm a professional programmer. I've been writing C++ for 15 years.

Silly, little C++ programs are rather easy, but are still much harder than the same thing in something like python or perl.

C++ is great for games and very high performance applications, but it's pretty tough as a first language. Manual memory management and pointers cause headaches to real professionals.

Learn the basics of programming with something like python. If you want to get closer to the metal because you want to know how computers really work, learn C or assembly first, and leave C++ for later. If all you want to do is make a few games quickly, I'd go for Flash or something like that. That'd let you concentrate in how a game works, and have to spend less time dealing with less gratifying infrastructure work.