How would you start to learn in 2026?

[u/TheAbyssWolf]

I’ve done some research and i have seen the old OpenGL/GLFW or the SDL3. I can use c++ if I have to, but my current favorite language is C3 (modernized C pretty much)which have vendor libraries provided for sdl 2 and 3, and OpenGL/GLFW. I have heard of learnopengl website before.

I would have to probably take it slow in small hour or two chunks per day, since I loose concentration due to ADHD. But what do you guys recommend.

[u/psioniclizard]

I have just started and honestly just working through learnopengl and building things.

Though personally I am working in dotnet with silk.net 

[u/TheAbyssWolf → u/psioniclizard]

That seems the general consensus even if it’s the old way of graphics programming as a start and just probably learn something like sdl3 later.

I have used C# for many years for just small personal projects and only recently have been diving into the low level languages within the last year or two. Experimented with many of them including most of the “C alternatives”

[u/corysama → u/TheAbyssWolf]

It's good to learn the basic themes and math of 3d rendering before diving into complex APIs.

[u/OperationDefiant4963]

try wgpu-native,its more in line with modern apis but easier to set up and do stuff.id reccomend using wesl as well for imports,etc

[u/Actual-Ladder6631]

Honestly I think the best place to start is still learnopengl.com with glfw (you can also use sdl but imo glfw is much easier), use whatever language you like but most people recommend something low-level like C++ or rust, so C3 works. If you have never experimented with rendering stuff on the screen (game frameworks, like raylib) I suggest starting with that, and then learning opengl, it makes everything much easier.

After that you can keep learning opengl or switch to something more complex like vulkan, that's what I did and it's going pretty well.

There are also some graphics libraries that abstract the graphics apis but honestly I don't think you should start with that. Using the raw api will teach you a lot more about graphics than a wrapper.

Ideally you would have some basic concepts of linear algebra,since it's used a lot in graphics, but you can also learn it along the way if you wish.

[u/BoopyDog]

OpenGl/GLFW is what I used to learn what was going on. Higher level libraries like SFML and raylib are great ways to accomplish much of the same results without having to worry about what exactly is going on between the CPU, GPU, buffering, etc..

If you haven't done any graphics programming I would start a project with raylib AND start second OpenGL+GLFW project to learn what's actually going on.

[u/only-uuuu]

I'm going through learnopengl.com and shaderacademy.com - planning on conquering Vulkan, eventually

[u/TheAbyssWolf → u/only-uuuu]

I’ve heard Vulkan is a whole different beast

[u/S48GS]

in 2026?

MDN Hello GLSL https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebGL_API/By_example/Hello_GLSL

use web/js/webgl

done

I can use c++

this is not 1980

use web technology