savagemonitor

While I don't believe that C++ is any harder to learn than Java (it always depends on what you learned first), if you don't have any experience programming, why don't you try C#? Because C# supports managed DirectX, you could work up to understanding what the programmers are talking about. C# also supports things that Java does not (like structs) that would help you to understand programs in C++. Plus, there are tons of tutorials out there that will teach you basic C# programming and lead you into DirectX.