C++ and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

[Freddie]

And witch of the following? (Or is it all of them?):
1) The C++ Programming Language: Special Edition (3rd Edition)
2) Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++
3) The Design and Evolution of C++
4) C++ Primer Plus (5th Edition)

When I said you'll probably end up buying Stroustrup's book I was thinking of #1. I hadn't heard of #2 until just now -- I see it was just published a few months ago -- but I just read Stroustrup's description of it on his blog, and it sounds perfect for you -- except maybe for the size. 1272 pages, yikes! #3 is written more for people who are interested in language design than for users of the lanuage.

I agree with Varmon's advice about breaking this up into separate topics but I wouldn't necessarily advise you to learn C first and then the rest of C++ and the Windows API later. That's how I did it myself, and it worked out well for me, but that was 25 years ago. I don't know if that's the best way today or the best way for everyone. The language has changed and the ways that people use the language has changed. Most of all, different people learn things best in different orders.

I would imagine that many people today approach C++ through its template library. That's just a guess on my part but that might work out well for some people. If you do that, you're starting at the "high level." If you start with C, you're starting from the "low level." Either way you want to develop a sense of how those levels interact so you can design good programs.

I think it's a good idea to keep in mind that there are several different topics. Then you can make the decision yourself whether you want to do them one at a time -- and if so in which order.

C++ has grown into an enormous language and you need to focus on the main parts of it especially at the beginning.

I'd divide the main topics like this:

1. The C subset of C++.

2. Object oriented concepts and the core object-oriented features of C++: classes, member functions, encapsulation, data abstraction, "contracts", data hiding, inheritance (some of those words mean more or less the same thing).

3. Other C++ features, especially templates.

4. The C++ template library.

5. If you're going to be writing Windows applications, the Win32 API.

My 0.02, even though you have previous programming experience is to start with C on a linux box so that you can focus 100% on learning C.

Can't he do the same thing on Windows with console app's?

[Freddie]

Something that I found invaluable when programming C/C++ back in the day was Paul Nettle's memory manager.

Best free code/tool I could use for finding those pesky memory leaks. It's something you really need to start with to save you a world of pain later on...

You can find it here; documentation in the code:

http://www.paulnettle.com/pub/FluidS...emoryManagers/

I never heard of this guy before but the source code looks impressive. When I saw the following, I laughed and was hooked! Programmer humor! I'm going to try this. I've never been happy with Visual C++'s memory leak tracking stuff. Thanks for posting this.

static		unsigned int	prefixPattern          = 0xbaadf00d; // Fill pattern for bytes preceeding allocated blocks
static		unsigned int	postfixPattern         = 0xdeadc0de; // Fill pattern for bytes following allocated blocks
static		unsigned int	unusedPattern          = 0xfeedface; // Fill pattern for freshly allocated blocks
static		unsigned int	releasedPattern        = 0xdeadbeef; // Fill pattern for deallocated blocks

[samuraicow]

As for Linux box vs Windows with console app's vs ?? (vs08?) well:
If Linux it wont be a "Linux box" rather virtual PC Linux =p, as for the console apps for windows, erm.. mind link some ?, and last, what is the alternative (also please try to keep in mind that I have yet to have done all of this so I'm not familiar with everything, although classes, member functions, data abstraction's implications are known to me )


And in regards to the amazon check list:
1) C Programming Language (2nd Edition)
2) The C++ Programming Language: Special Edition (3rd Edition)
3) Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ (size dos NOT scare me, seriously I farmed for hand of rag solo (with 1 char) pre-bc, that's 5700gold obtained in 15g\hour, you think 1200 pages or 5000 pages scare me? ._. oh and I also accomplished the above in a month, so dedication (or madness) is also available in large quantity, the only difference is that back then I knew exactly what I was doing and whats the steps I need to take, IRL is a red quest if I may use wow reference, the difference is that just getting the quest's text is a quest for itself, and then when you find out, it makes legendary weapon farming looks like walk in the park, the good part is that the reword is just that much bigger =p

I just hit 200 played days with my main, and done two things: multiply 4800 by 5$ to see how much money I could have made as babysitter if I done that instead of wow, second.. I just imagined for a second how would my life look if i invested that much time (say 80% of it) in programing and say the other 20% in the gym ._. like Google\Intel\Microsoft employ+Arnold in one .. gif? so while I cant change the past, (And I also, don't really want to), I can chose (or try to) how the future is going to look, and well, its going to be epic

And I also wish to thank all of you for helping me out with this red quest my work is far from over but now I can see the road.

(My mind works with "sights" every thing that I think of brings and image, a well detailed one aswell, I could probably spend days writing about it witch i just saw but a light edition of it would be:
I see an image in my mind of a man standing on a cleft witch is also a clearing in a giant forest that lays in a valley surrounded by mountains, and that man can see near the horizon a glowing light that illuminates the great destination)
I am that man, the forest mountains and valley represents the many different ways things can end up with, and many temptations that I might discover along the way as well as the different danger that I might come across at the jungle(witch is life), and I am going to just "dive in" the valley\forest and start my long journey, for high school (and mandatory service at the army) ware just the sneak preview of it witch you all call life

FUN! :thumbsup: Cant wait to get started (so lets finalize that Amazon shop list )

[Freddie]

as for the console apps for windows, erm.. mind link some ?

That's Microsoft's name for a program that runs in a command window (the old fashioned black window with text output) without necessarily creating a GUI window. The Visual C++ compiler lets you decide whether a given project is a console app or not. -

ipconfig.exe is an example of a console app. It's included as part of Windows in the System32 folder, and it displays its output to you in a command window instead of a GUI window.

[samuraicow]

Freddie, I take it that the finalized list of the 3 books listed above got your approve?

And yeah I did know about apps such as ipsocnifg (hell i use it all the time =p) I just didn't know that console app was there nickname xD (CMD ftw?)

[Moorea]

I think you may want to learn C++ and skip C, ie do

cout << "Hello World" << endl;

directly instead of doing

printf("Hello World\n");

as as you can see c++ stdlib is quite different than c' and you may learn bad C habits

ps: I have to add though that C is a good low level language while C++ is a horrible hack - if you want to learn a clean modern OO language learn Java instead - if you have time learn C for low level/system stuff

[Freddie]

Freddie, I take it that the finalized list of the 3 books listed above got your approve?

I think the first two books are great. Like I said I haven't read Stroustrup's newest book but he's a genius and all his other books are interesting and valuable so I imagine this one is too. He invented the language and he's amazingly smart and he's written a textbook for people just like you ... sounds good.

My only fear is that your poor delivery dude is going to injure himself lugging this stuff to your door ... this is a lot of reading.

Best of all, you can send them back to Amazon if you don't like them.

[samuraicow]

:P 8o ^^ ^________^ Happy!

I like new beginnings :-)

Thanks all

And again, thank you Freddie!



Edit:
Last question, what do you guys think about a book for Visual Studio 2008, its a rather large software with many tools, and while I am sure I could mange, perhaps knowing it well from start could help? (like whats one more book to read heh )

[Freddie]

Last question, what do you guys think about a book for Visual Studio 2008, its a rather large software with many tools, and while I am sure I could mange, perhaps knowing it well from start could help? (like whats one more book to read heh )

I wouldn't bother for Visual Studio as a whole but if you can find a good book about using the debugger, you might want to buy it since the debugger is very powerful and a lot of its features aren't obvious. But for the other parts of Visual Studio I think it's probably just as easy (or hard) to look up instructions for free on MSDN. But maybe I'm wrong, I dunno, I've been using VIsual Studio for a long time so I'm used to it.

There used to be a pretty good book about the Visual Studio C++ debugger called "Debugging Applications" by John Robbins, Microsoft Press, but the current edition apparently contains info for both C++/Win32 and C#/.NET. I don't know how much C++/Win32 stuff is in the newer edition:

http://www.amazon.com/Debugging-Appl...7510816&sr=1-3

If you feel like spending more money, instead of buying books about Visual Studio you might be better off with books about algorithms, the Win32 API, strategies for writing bug-free code, etc.

[magwo]

For the purpose of becoming a better programmer, I would recommend learning a functional language such as Scheme, Lisp or Haskell.

In my experience, programmers who have at some point in their career/education/hobbies embraced a functional language, write better code.
People who have really understood functional languages tend to write maintainable, flexible and easily debuggable code. They may not write more correct code as in program correctness, but the "debuggability" of the code that they write makes mistakes and bugs much less problematic and costly to fix.

While people who only ever programmed in stateful languages, "imperative style", tend to write long and messy functions that are very prone to error when you maintain and refactor the code.


For example, consider recursion. To a programmer experienced with functional programming, this is the "easy" solution - the naive implementation. But to the imperative style programmer, recursion is scary and complex, and usually doesn't even come to mind when he/she writes code.


When a functional style programmer writes code in a function, he sees functions in hiding. When an imperative style programmer writes code in a function, he sees steps.