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wanting to learn C / C++

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 4:58 am
by malcolmboston
Hi Guys,

Ive always been interested in learning c / c++ but having looked into it a few times ive always been overawed with the syntax, compilers, development environments etc, just picking a compiler, with minimal knowledge myself, has been a chore in itself.

For someone who is coming from purely a web based programming background would you recommend any excellent sites / resources for complete newbies? with simple to follow tutorials? I am interested in the whole game development side of things, maybe looking into the HL2 SDK for eg and modifying later down the line to get to grips with how game engines work etc.........

Obviously, im one man, i dont expect to build a game engine in my lifetime but it does fascinate me, any nods in the right direction guys?

Cheers, Mal

Re: wanting to learn C / C++

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 11:28 am
by McInfo
I found Richard Buckland's COMP1917 lecture series on YouTube to be quite informative. The course primarily focuses on programming in general, but it is, as a side-effect, a valuable resource for learning the C language. The videos are large (100MB on average), but they're worth that inconvenience.

Re: wanting to learn C / C++

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 3:40 pm
by alex.barylski
Learning C/C++ is a long tedious process, this you already know. Just getting an environment up and running and a basic hello world compiling can be exhausting. If you wan to start learning C/C++ right off the bat I owuld suggest downloading MS Visual Express:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downlo ... Visual-CPP

They have always had excellent IDE and build tools which come pre-packaged to let you start writing code like yesterday. Also, using that, you can visit codeproject.com for any VC++ questions, demo code, articles and more. Incredible community they have there.

If you want something a little more 'open' then I would also recommend Bloodshed C++ as it's IDe is quite good and comes with wizards to quickly get you building C/C++ programs, either console or Window'ed applications.

In either case, console application development is what you want to start with as it's much easier than Windows programming.

Cheers,
Alex