Ok, so, the original program I wanted to improve (netpong), it turned out that I couldn't (yet) figure out a way to merge the two aspects into a single function, since they hard-code different keymappings. Moving on, the next program I wanted to work on (shareaza) was FAR too complicated for me to get into (yet). I still think it's within my abilities, but I need to get a bit more familiar with the structure of the language again. It's been a while since I've worked with C++. Finally, I think I've found something more my present speed, which will let me get refamiliar with the language and also work on structure. In a group of C++ tutorials, I found a hangman program. A VERY VERY BAD hangman program. It functions, but it isn't the least bit object oriented (it has exactly one function other than main, and all it does is run a set of four if-then statements that would probably be better formulated as a single switch statement). It also doesn't even approach human-readable... most of its variables are single letters with no indication of what they do unless you read through the code and find them in action, and they're all declared in a clump. It looks like the programmer was probably taught this as a way of shortening the program, in that you only need one declaration of variables per variable type and the variable names themselves take up less space, but any speed increase due to that would be negligible and completely countered by the increased time needed to understand the program in order to maintain or update it. I'm going to see what I can do to get it fixed up, then I'll post both versions of the code and see what people think.
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