Unreal to learn C++ ?

Unreal C++ is pretty much it's own dialogue of C++. It has it's own coding standard, it's own containers, a whole set of macros, plus loads more I can't think of right now. It's quite different from 'vanilla' C++.

IMO that's a good thing though, C++ is a mess of a language but most complaints about it (no standard so everyone's code looks different etc) don't apply to Unreal C++. Downside is it's even more complicated.

If you've never programmed before, then don't. Go learn python, if you just want to make programs; or C if you want to learn how programs work. For C I recommend edX CS50 as a very good introduction to programming, I never actually learnt python but everyone seems to recommend it for everything.

If you have programmed then it's still pretty tough, but it's doable. This is what I did, I used Fortran and Mathematica (and R, and while that's surprisingly useful it's not really relevant to most people) before I started working with Unreal. I learnt through this Udemy course, it's not cheap but it's 1000x better than any youtube tutorial I've come across. Encourages good practice, shows you how to solve problems for yourself rather than just 'this is how I do it'. Doesn't skirt around difficult things like algorithm mathematics and pointers.

Also remember Unreal has blueprints, and you can make whole games with them. They tend to overcomplicate things (like a basic mathematical equation can take up 30-40 nodes quite quickly, when a few lines of code in a function would have sufficed (yes, custom functions)), but some BP functionality like materials is really really solid.

/r/unrealengine Thread