OpenGL vs DirectX

Going to apologize in advance because I have a feeling that this topic might be worn out for /prog/.

I'm a very novice programmer. I've picked up a decent amount of C++ and enjoy messing around with it but I would like to work with graphics. I've been doing reading up on both OpenGL and DirectX and cannot seem to find which would be easier in general.

Which would be easier for a novice?

Any other tips on becoming a better programmer in general would be awesome as well.

>>6
>OpenGL is just graphics, DirectX has graphics, sound, input, networking. So if you go with OpenGL you will also have to choose another library like GLUT or SDL for it to run with.

Unfortunately everything except for Graphics is deprecated from DirectX except for DirectInput for joysticks. Oh I think there is DirectSound but it hasn't been updated since like 7.0

I would probably recommend Direct3d for graphics still only because of how easy and how many resources there are for getting up and running.

They both use the same methodology and that is why you can easily write an abstraction layer around both of them. Minor changes do exist such as matrix sizes and shader language but they can do the same thing very easily.