Comment by atoav

One of my first bigger programming projects was a side-scroller in Processing. Processing.org was an amazing way to get into programming since you could draw onto the screen with minimal code.

So I essentially had to write my own physics, collisions, trigger functionality, ways of describing levels, enemies etc. The resulting game wasn't really fun, but I loved the process and the lessons learned.

Turns out writing your own game engine is a pretty good way of learning to understand existing ones.