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Control Flow

2 (2.2%)

Arrays, Strings, Pointers, and References

8 (9%)

Functions

4 (4.5%)

Basic object-oriented programming

30 (33.7%)

A bit more advanced OOP (Composition, Operator overloading, Inheritance, Virtual Functions)

18 (20.2%)

Templates

8 (9%)

Other (Explain)

4 (4.5%)

Working with files?  (Streams)

15 (16.9%)

Total Members Voted: 89

[Blacken]

Eclipse auto-embeds documentation that can be looked up online, but is otherwise a hassle to lookup.

"extremely" convenient.

That's nothing better IDEs (like NetBeans) don't already do. The IDE is not the problem. The process of learning is. Focus on the correct problem, not your pet problem.

Loopy:

Ordinarily I recommend people start with Python, because the literature is better, but Java's fine too. There is a port of the How to Think Like A Computer Scientist book, which is probably the best book on the topic I have ever read, full stop. It is available here. If you can tackle that book carefully (don't try to rush the learning process), you will be extremely well-off as a novice programmer. I'd recommend then exploring the problem said I laid out earlier in the thread, which are much more self-directed.

[LoopyDood]

Thanks for the help, Blacken. I'm reading through it right now; seems to be good info so far, but I wish there was a version in print.

[Org]

I want to learn more about C++, and while Outcast Orange can help me learn, he sometimes is busy with his game when I have free time.
If anyone could help me out, that would be cool. I dislike tutorials. Its always more helpful when I have someone I can talk to if I do not understand how to do something.

But if anyone can help me, that would be awesome.

Yeah.

[Siquo]

What kind of help are you looking for? If you dislike tutorials, you could try to read Stroustrups C++ front-to-back. I have. Excellent sleeping material.

[stummel]

What kind of help are you looking for? If you dislike tutorials, you could try to read Stroustrups C++ front-to-back. I have. Excellent sleeping material.

^^
Never ever. Even Stroustrup discourages reading his book to learn C++. It's more like an encyclopedia, but not a guide.

[Siquo]

And then there's tutorials. I don't really know any other learning method, other than sitting in school listening to stuff you'll never use in real life.

[Outcast Orange]

He needs professional help.
Giving Org assistance is not a simple task.

He will test your patience, your sanity, and the integrity of programming.

A nice person, definitely, but things just have a habit of bursting into flames around him.

[Org]

Not my fault!

Anyway, finally got the other version of Code Blocks, and I am setting it up.

However, there is one feature I do not know if I should add(I am installing it).
It is C::B Sharing. Allows sharing of your most important settings between Code Blocks instances and users.

[qwertyuiopas]

Depending on why you dislike tutorials, Beej's Guide to C Programming might help, at least for pointers and arrays. It, in my opinion, is far better than many others simply because it has actual humour combined with a decent pace. It isn't about C++, unfortunately, so you would still need to seek out help with classes, templates, overloading, C++ libraries, etc., but if there is anything you don't understand that it covers, it can probably help.

[Siquo]

It is C::B Sharing. Allows sharing of your most important settings between Code Blocks instances and users.

AFAIK, you don't need it unless you work on different computers in the same network.

[Alexhans]

I'm about to finish my college term and things are picking up a bit.  I'll get back to this thread soon.

Although, the more I learn (And I realize I don't know a thing) the more I think that programming shouldn't be mixed with learning a complex language, as c++ is.  It's a hazardous task and, being a relatively new science, there's many different opinions of the way to go, the implementations of solutions to different problems. 

btw, So far, college is dissapointing in that it doesn't strongly suggest us to give problems real thought (diagram, notes) before coding.

[Siquo]

Hmm, I was taught to first create your framework and then start the actual coding. Might differ per school or teacher, though.

I tend to end up with a zillion empty functions filled with pseudocode before I actually start programming.

C++ isn't necessarily complex. It allows for dirty shortcuts, but you have to force yourself not to use them. Instead, adhering to the C++ "good programming" style, you force yourself to rethink the logic of your design. If it's hard to do in C++, it probably a bad design.

[Blacken]

Although, the more I learn (And I realize I don't know a thing) the more I think that programming shouldn't be mixed with learning a complex language, as c++ is.  It's a hazardous task and, being a relatively new science, there's many different opinions of the way to go, the implementations of solutions to different problems.

This is essentially correct. And why, despite lots of people derping and screaming that oh I'm wrong, I stick to the assertion that Python or even C# are significantly simpler, pedagogically superior languages.

btw, So far, college is dissapointing in that it doesn't strongly suggest us to give problems real thought (diagram, notes) before coding.

How can they? They don't have enough time and it's just for a grade anyway. It's your own projects where you will learn really valuable stuff.

--

If it's hard to do in C++, it probably a bad design.

Trivially cross-platform code--if you need a platform-specific #define (yes, even just one) you already failed. Nobody will credibly argue that this is a bad design.

Inversion of control. It can be done, but it's ugly and it sucks.

Interfaces; MI doesn't have the same behavior.

Reliable performant memory management; nobody does it well.

Debugging threaded applications. I'm reasonably sure threading isn't "bad design."

Reflection; nigh-impossible in C++ and most definitely not a bad design.


C++ has its place. General-purpose programming is not really it, and hasn't been for a long time. Large-scale programming hasn't been it since we realized we could actually write and use better tools. It greatly encourages stupid, wrong, and bad behaviors, and while top-notch programmers can avoid them, 99% of people using C++ are not top-notch programmers and aren't even properly using the libraries written by top-notch programmers.

I don't often agree with Joel Spolsky, but he says something along the lines of this: you'll write a program in C++ in 40 hours. The next guy will write it in Python (or C#) and do it in 25 and it'll run 80% as fast (or closer to 95%, with .NET or Java). The operations cases where 60% more hours are worth 20% more performance are very few and far between.

[Virex]

Not to mention that the guy using python could probably get within 95% of the performance given the 40 hours he would spend on C++, but then you already got a working program after 25 hours

[Blacken]

Well, yes. Sort of. Using Psyco and the like will improve your Python performance significantly. But the "Python way" is often to write C code to improve perf of particularly sticky areas, so that's not really fair.

(By the way, to forestall the usual: anyone who looks at those "language shootout" charts as being meaningful is nuts. They actually take into account time taken to JIT-compile the code for their little toy problems. You JIT once during the running of an application and generally only optimize over time in specialized VMs like JRockit. When you measure time of a piece of Java or .NET code it can often be faster than the equivalent C++ code due to better internal optimizations that you don't have to care about.)