Alekhine

I'm thinking about starting a company that does programming work for areas of society that normally don't have the best software to work with. I've read stories of code in science labs running orders of magnitude longer than it should because of bad algorithms, for example. What other niches are there like this, which could be served by a business that seeks them out? Currently I'm thinking of science and medicine, though the latter has the additional hurdle of certification and other bureaucratic obstacles.

There's a hundred of these and I want something well-written. I'm primarily using Nim but a C/C++ book wouldn't hurt. Ideally it would have lots of exercises.

Despite being a smart person, I've never been the kind of A type personality who does well at school. The environment just doesn't suit me. I don't know why. I've been told I have ADHD, but I do fine and manage time well when I'm in an actual job setting with stakes.

I'm in college now and have just been told I won't be receiving my CS degree. I came in as an English major because my grades weren't good enough to enter the competitive CS program at my school, so I just took CS courses on override. But here too, my grades were not good enough and I won't be allowed to transfer into the major. I'll have to settle for an informatics degree, and after graduation get a CS degree from WGU or something like that.

I suppose I'm looking for validation from anybody else who had a tortured academic path. I'm a little sick of being told I am not good enough because I don't meet the metrics.

Aside from a quadratic formula program written on my TI-84 in high school, I did not do any real programming before I was 19, when I learned C because I consciously decided I wanted to learn a new skill. I read stories of learning on a ZX-Spectrum at 5 years old, but I never really got that experience of just playing around. I think for me, programming has always been work, and that makes me very sad because I know this can be a very rich and rewarding hobby. I think the only time I really felt this was when I played EXAPUNKS.

Can someone point me in the direction of 'fun' programming? Tools that are just really enjoyable to use? I want to find the joy in computers.