hey hacker

[heretic909]

I'm trying to learn how to program and I've got MS Visual C++ which I'm using to edit and create my .exe files. But the text I'm learning from is just called "Teach Yourself C++". Are Visual C++ and C++ the same thing? I'm a total beginner at this shit so I'm not sure if I should find a "teach yourself visual c++" text or not.

[CRACKHEAD]

visual c++ and c++ are totally different languages.

They might have some similarities, maybe you could use the book to help program in visual c++.

my reccomendation would be to get a book that is for the language you want to program in.

just my 2 cents.

[heretic909]

cool, thanks for the info

[thehacker]

Originally posted by heretic909

I'm trying to learn how to program and I've got MS Visual C++ which I'm using to edit and create my .exe files. But the text I'm learning from is just called "Teach Yourself C++". Are Visual C++ and C++ the same thing? I'm a total beginner at this shit so I'm not sure if I should find a "teach yourself visual c++" text or not.

microsoft visual studio (visual c++) is an environment in which to program in the c++ language to develop Windows apps...

it all depends what you wanna do...

if you want to learn how to develop windows apps,

best bet is to get one of the QUE (that's a publisher)

books on developing windows apps using visual c++.

if you want to learn the ins and outs of the Language itself,

ditch visual c++ entirely, spend the time to download

the GNU compiler for c++ (called "gcc" - comes with linux,

but available on any platform) and use it to create some

command-line programs to get you started...

hope that helps.

[milamber3]

c++ is actually a bitch to start from scratch with. Im not saying its impossible but I'd suggest starting with perl or something a little easier. atleast till you get the basics down. Jumping into pointers, passing by reference, link lists, etc without prior knowledge from some high school Basic and Pascal classes would have blown my mind!

[thehacker]

a good track to learning how to program:

- basic

- pascal

- c++

- java

[thehacker]

i mention those and not perl or javascript

because, well... they're TYPELESS languages.

they both let you get away with things

that other languages don't.

such as

myvar = "hi there";

myvar = 37;

is perfectly valid in both,

however any 'decent' language

will fail to compile this because

the first instance of myvar is as

a string variable, so setting it

to a numeric later on would be

considered a failure of datatyping.

[heretic909]

Originally posted by thehacker

it all depends what you wanna do...

I've actually got this long-term goal where I want to program my own game for a PC. I've got Bryce, Poser, Lightwave, Genesis and Shadow Realm Model Animator to create my characters and landscapes, and you know I'm gonna have some sick audio for it. So I figured now would be as good a time as any to start teaching myself the basics of programming. I think I'm gonna stick with Visual C++ for this project and see how it goes. If it ends up working, great. If not, well at least I learned something new along the way.

[thehacker]

that typa multimedia game BEGS

to be developed using Macromedia Director.

i realize it would seem a bit 'out of the box' if you did it that way,

but at least you'd learn, conceptually, how to create program

flows and logic and event triggers and such.