I'm not sure of the language that the school will use, I will be attending UNT ( university of north Texas) it will be something i will look into. If you know of the school and have any ideas of direction I would be interested In listening. That's y I am writing here to get a good start and direction. That is good info to know thanks for putting it out there this forum is a great help. Keep posting I do appreciate it very much thanks again to all who reply.

UNT looks ok. Their CS core requirements include Java, C++, and even Assembly Language.

They even have:
CSCE 4210 GAME PROGRAMMING I using DirectX
CSCE 4215 PROGRAMMING MATH AND PHYSICS FOR GAMES
CSCE 4220 GAME PROGRAMMING II
CSCE 4250 TOPICS IN GAME DEVELOPMENT

Sounds like a good idea. A class with Dr. Parberry sounds interesting.

Some thoughts:

1. Sure you can get a career doing the minimum to get by, but you boost your chances considerably by doing more than that. Sounds like you are planning on doing some learning on your own. Stick to that plan.

2. I'd recommend doing some beginner tutorials in any language. Preferably something like Python so you aren't fighting with a compiler, but C++ will be fine. The idea is to get comfortable with the very basics - variables, loops, control statements, etc. If you can start thinking like a programmer, you'll have a big head start on your classmates.

3. I think being older can be a blessing in disguise. Older students are the ones who take school seriously. They realize what's at stake in a way that 17- and 18-year-olds who've never had to provide for themselves can't comprehend.

Its never too late. I had quite a few students in my classes who came in from the military and were closer to 30. Occasionally, you'd see 40+ year old students. The whole idea of age being a factor is, in large part, arbitrary. Also, many of my classmates did not program at all before college, so you should not let that worry you either.

However, one thing you should note is that college alone will not teach you how to be a good software developer. You need to program on your own, outside of college too, and challenge yourself. Don't coast through your classes and expect to jump out of college and into your dream career. The people who tried that struggled to find work, while the students who were always working on some free-time project or another easily landed jobs.

Edit: By the way, I hate to be *that guy*, but you really should focus on using proper grammar and spelling to get your points across. Its very important that you present yourself well, even in informal settings such as online forums. Its also rude to expect us to sort through a hard-to-read wall-of-text-with-terrible-grammar.

Thanks for all the replies, u have given me good hope. Yes I know about the grammar and stuff I do apologize, computer crashed and I am writing these threads on my IPhone, I'll have a new computer in about a week and my writings will be alot better grammer wise. Thanks again for replies and I am grateful all input is nice

College is definitely not enough. I learned C in high school, then went to a 4 year university for computer science. I'm 26 now, and have been out of school for 4 years. When I look back at the code I wrote in college, it is messy as hell and almost unreadable. I got the concepts in school, but didn't have the discipline. I've learned so much more about proper engineering, design, code reuse and best practices in the 4 years AFTER school then the 4 years IN school.

I've also found that, of the students I knew, the ones that learned programming IN school were no good at it. The ones that learned on their own (even if they only learned Qbasic on their own) were the best, since they already got some of the basic programming paradigms out on their own. The best way to learn programming is to grab a book (or nowadays a wiki page) and just start doing it.