Using a Training-Wheels Games and Graphics Library from Day One with Beginning C++
Will Briggs · 2021
C++ is a powerful and popular language, but its lack of support for graphics and WIMP interaction makes it less alluring to beginners, degrading student outcomes. Existing graphics libraries are too difficult for day-one beginners, but the SSDL wrapper of the popular SDL2 library makes programming with graphics and games as easy as ordinary C++ programming, and provides seamless training-wheels prep for moving on to console I/O. Sample programs showing the improvements over other libraries are presented, and sample CS1 student projects are discussed.