Help me, I'm a newb. My parents told me to learn how to program stuff this summer, but I don't know how to get C++. Is it downloadable? Any help would be appreciable. Thanks.

To "get" C++ you need a C++ compiler which includes the stuff needed to create programs.

I'd recommend Dev C++ (http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/devcpp.html), a free IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that includes both a compiler and an editor in which you write your code.

Then start with a tutorial like: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

Thanks! I really appreciate it.

Help me, I'm a newb. My parents told me to learn how to program stuff this summer, but I don't know how to get C++. Is it downloadable? Any help would be appreciable. Thanks.

And you should learn how to program because your parents told you to do it!! :rolleyes:

Hehe, why do they want you to program? Taking a computing course at college/uni or something? :lol:

C/C++ were the first languages I learned when I was.....12-13 I think. I didn't find them very good to learn though. Maybe you will be different. I found that to progress from Visual Basic to Java was much better, and knowing Java, I am able to make the transition C++ much easier since they are so similar (Java is based upon C++). If this is your first time programming, I would highly recommend you learn something else!

I would also recommend the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express suite, which contains IDEs for Visual Basic, C++, C#, J# (basically Java) and web development languages. You'll find them here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/. They are easy to use, and very informative.

Make sure you read the C++ ISO Standards, front to back. You have to have it memorized!

Ha, ha, good joke about remembering the standard.

If you really wamt to learn C++, and I don't recommend it for beginners, I'd get Visual Studio express too, the IDE is better than DevC++ so I hear.

A better language to learn would be Python.

Or you could skip all the easy stuff and learn some Intercal.

Your parents told you about programming? :lol: Times has changed...

I recommend you begin using Linux if you want to learn programming. Fedora is a nice distribution to start with and it comes with c, c++, python, perl, assembly compilers, and probably more that I'm unaware of.

Also read 'The C Programming Language' you can check it out from the library. There you have it, all free. Please disregard those proprietary suggestions.

I recommend you begin using Linux if you want to learn programming. Fedora is a nice distribution to start with and it comes with c, c++, python, perl, assembly compilers, and probably more that I'm unaware of.

That's a rather silly and completely untrue statement. What reason is there for using Linux in development, aside from personal preference or needing to test code on that platform?

If you really wamt to learn C++, and I don't recommend it for beginners, I'd get Visual Studio express too, the IDE is better than DevC++ so I hear.

I hate Visual Studio, with a passion. For anything simple, DevC++ is much easier and conveniant to use.

Make sure you read the C++ ISO Standards, front to back. You have to have it memorized!

Good programmers don't memorize, they understand fundamentals.

Syntax and functions can always be looked up.

You know, there's a lot of cool smileys on this forum, but they could really use a 'Troll' smiley. ;)

That's a rather silly and completely untrue statement. What reason is there for using Linux in development, aside from personal preference or needing to test code on that platform?

Why, vi and emacs of course! :mischief:

Why, vi and emacs of course! :mischief:
Meh, give me UltraEdit any day. :p

I hate Visual Studio, with a passion. For anything simple, DevC++ is much easier and conveniant to use.

For any remotely complicated projects, though, Visual Studio is a godsend. If they're still offering the Express version for free, I'd definetly grab it.

Good programmers don't memorize, they understand fundamentals.

Syntax and functions can always be looked up.
Good programmers not only understand syntax, but write standards-compliant code (which is above and beyond fundamentals).

Good software engineers and software developers understand fundamentals as well.

It's the hierarchy.

You've got your Indian codemonkeys/DeVry grads at the bottom which memorize syntax and don't know the fundamentals.
You've got your dime-a-dozen university grads in the middle which know the fundamentals but write awful code.
And then you've got the true software engineers at the top which know the fundamentals and the standards, and write great code.

Good programmers don't memorize, they understand fundamentals.

Syntax and functions can always be looked up.


Yeah, programming languages have too much for one to memorize completely (especially if you must be knowledgable in several), so as long as you understand the language fundamentals, you can apply the rest easily by looking it up.

For any remotely complicated projects, though, Visual Studio is a godsend. If they're still offering the Express version for free, I'd definetly grab it.

Yes, it really is great even for my simple projects. And yeah, it is still free - I think it will continue to be, I don't see any "limited offer" messages anywhere...

Yes, it really is great even for my simple projects. And yeah, it is still free - I think it will continue to be, I don't see any "limited offer" messages anywhere...

It was originally only going to be offered free for a year (Nov '05 - Nov '06 IIRC), but apparently they changed that.

Personally, I just use g++ in Cygin for C++. I typically just use emacs as my editor.

C/C++ were the first languages I learned when I was.....12-13 I think. I didn't find them very good to learn though. Maybe you will be different. I found that to progress from Visual Basic to Java was much better, and knowing Java, I am able to make the transition C++ much easier since they are so similar (Java is based upon C++). If this is your first time programming, I would highly recommend you learn something else! I strongly agree with this. I learnt C, but found I couldn't quite get the hang of object oriented programming with C++. But then I learned Java, which was easy to understand, and suddeny C++ made sense.

To add to the IDE discussion, I use kDevelop on Linux and I like it a lot. It compiles everything by itself (using g++), which I haven't managed to convince Visual Studio to do.

To "get" C++ you need a C++ compiler which includes the stuff needed to create programs.

I'd recommend Dev C++ (http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/devcpp.html), a free IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that includes both a compiler and an editor in which you write your code.

Then start with a tutorial like: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

As a Java programmer myself I have grown fond of Eclipse and the one fun/cool program now that I saw a while back was that their is infact an eclipse for C++...I might try it out some time but for now...Java is my home :lol:

To add to the IDE discussion, I use kDevelop on Linux and I like it a lot. It compiles everything by itself (using g++), which I haven't managed to convince Visual Studio to do.
I'm 99% sure that Visual Studio will only work with Microsoft's compilers.... may be wrong, though.

It can work with other compilers.

At school we learnt Pascal first, and IMO it's a great language to learn first. It's "easier" than C++, and certainly throws out nicer error messages, and it still teaches you all the conventions and concepts that learning any other programming language will teach you.

One thing though, DON'T be tempted to learn Visual Basic first :ack: . It teaches you terrible bad habits, and the variable types are very different to most other languages. It lets you get away with a lot of things, which is good if you just want to throw something together quickly, but if you want to learn a language it's absolutely terrible. Imagine a teacher that gave every student an "A" ...

Personally, I learnt C first (although I used a C++ compiler, and cout and cin and all that, I didn't learn about objects and classes until I seriously started getting into VB), which was very difficult to learn from an online tutorial... :ack: . After a year or so I was good enough to make cheats for Counterstrike, so it was well worth it :)

Actually I learned Visual Basic 6 first at my high school last year and then moved onto Java this year. IMHO its ALL about what kind of tutorial or teacher you have that teaches you good programming ethics. Visual Basic 6 was a great stepping stone because it was simplistic in design and taught me the fundamentals of programming which is if you don't know how to do something look it up and don't declare every variable a global variable and get rid of extra crud you don't need.

And cheating on counter strike :p not too hard parsay :lol: But I still enjoy using Java more than C++ or C because I am comfortable with it, though next year when I go onto Computer Sciences I will be forced to learn it and love it :p and until then...I'm fine

VB.net aint so bad I hear. VB6 is the work of Satan.

I'd still go for Python myself, maybe Java or C#. Being interpreted rather than compiled ala Pascal means you get results from the start (for Python anyway). It's free too, and very powerful language construct wise, it's got some nice LISP like features too.

Hehe, why do they want you to program? Taking a computing course at college/uni or something? :lol:

C/C++ were the first languages I learned when I was.....12-13 I think. I didn't find them very good to learn though. Maybe you will be different. I found that to progress from Visual Basic to Java was much better, and knowing Java, I am able to make the transition C++ much easier since they are so similar (Java is based upon C++). If this is your first time programming, I would highly recommend you learn something else!

I would also recommend the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express suite, which contains IDEs for Visual Basic, C++, C#, J# (basically Java) and web development languages. You'll find them here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/. They are easy to use, and very informative.

It also depends on necessity. Appliance for the computer science studies at Helsinki university require that you use one of certain programming languages, I think there was C, C++, C#, and some others.. But, for example, VBASIC is not allowed.