Hello everyone!

I recently started studying DM (again), and I just wanted to introduce myself and maybe get some advice from some of the more veteran programmers out there.

Introduction

I've always loved programming. In fact, my first programming experience came when I was a sophomore in high school (so about 13 years ago!) and a friend and I discovered BYOND. I couldn't believe that I could design and program my own video games! I thought Dan and Tom were geniuses (still do, of course).

And just as a side, I must say that it's absolutely GREAT to see that some of the old "faces" I remember from "back in the day are still active;" Deadron, Fireking (he definitely doesn't remember, but I was his pupil for a little while), Lummox JR, Nadrew, SilkWizard (I remember playing the first installment of DWO), Zilal (and I remember her game 'Lexicon'). Wow, the nostalgia... I wish I would have kept up with programming as all of you seem to have.

Anyway, after having my interest in programming piqued by DM, I took some C++ courses in high school, as well. I truly loved programming.
Unfortunately, being young (and immature), I wasn't able to stick with it. I guess I didn't see the results I had wanted; 'to make ub3r 1337 gamez!' and my motivation to learn to program would come in waves.

After high school I went to college (to study business), graduated and started working; never devoting any serious effort to learning how to program. I never forgot about my love for programming, though. I would buy books, take online classes, watch videos, etc... from time to time, when the programming itch was particularly strong, but I never stuck with it for the necessary amount of time.

Now, I would say that I am most familiar with Python. However, I'm only a novice at best. I recently (for the third or fourth time) started trying to make video games in python, but wasn't having much luck. I thought to myself, "Man, I remember how I could make a sprite and a map, and have my character moving and jumping around on the screen in a matter of minutes when I was programming with DM." Then I thought to myself, "Why aren't you programming in DM right now?"

I used to think that because DM wasn't a "major" language, that my time would be better spent learning Java, Ruby, C, Python, or some other "major" language. Of course, now I understand that most programming languages are very similar, and that having a deep knowledge of one, makes learning others infinitely easier. DM seems to be the perfect introductory language for a beginner programmer (which is why I am humbly crawling back).

Now that I am older, I feel that I have the stick-to-itveness to really focus and learn how to program something decent in DM. Over the past week, I've read through The Blue Book twice, and every link under the "Resources by Developers" in the BYOND Resource Repository.

Request for Advice

Anyway, now that all of that is out of the way, I'm just wondering where I should go from here.

I understand that reading material is very important, but I also understand that the quickest way to learn is to actually put what you read and study into practice.

I've always dreamed of making my own RPG (as I was obsessed with them for most of my childhood). Naturally, I don't have any illusions of being able to program an epic game right off the bat (or even in the distant future). For now, I only want to build up the necessary skills to be able to put together a sound game (regardless of how simple it is). I just don't know in which direction to take that first step toward building my own net dream.

So, if anyone has any good advice, or some challenges they think are worth doing, I'd appreciate any input!