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C++ Workshop - Getting Started with C++ (Ch. 1 & 2)

Jeromy Walsh · 2008-05-18T16:41:20

Welcome to the GDNet C++ Workshop – Ch. 1 & 2For a complete introduction to this workshop, please look here. Workshop Overview This workshop is designed to aid people in their journey to learn beginning C++. This workshop is targeted at highly motivated individuals who are interested in learning C++ or who have attempted to learn C++ in the past, but found that without sufficient support and mentoring they were unable to connect all the pieces of this highly complex but powerful programming language. This is a 'guided' self-teaching C++ workshop. Each student is responsible for taking the time to read the material and learn the information. The community and tutors that arise out of this workshop are here for making the learning process run more smoothly, but are not obligated to baby-sit a person's progress. Because everyone will be working from the same textbook (Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days 5th Ed.), students may find it easier to get answers to the specific questions they might have. There is no minimum age requirement, and there is no previous programming experience required. Additionally, this workshop does not attempt to defend C++ as a language, nor does it attempt to demonstrate that C++ is either more or less useful then other programming languages for any particular purpose. People who intend to start a discussion about the differences between C++ and ANY other languages (except as are relevant to a particular discussion), are encouraged to do so elsewhere. This workshop is for educational, not philosophical discussions. Quizzes & Exercises Each chapter will have quizzes and exercises. Please try and answer them by yourself. If you try with reasonable effort but are unable to answer the questions or complete the exercises, feel free to post a clarification question here on the thread. Tutors, myself, or others will do the best we can to point you in the right direction for finding the answer. Chapter 1 – Getting Started, Chapter 2 – The Anatomy of a C++ ProgramIntroduction Greetings! Most weeks will be 7 days, beginning on Monday and ending on Sunday, however as this week starts on Thursday, and is the first “week” in the class, we will extend it to a full 10 days to get on a better schedule and give people a chance to obtain their textbooks in the mail. Additionally, as the topics are relatively straight forward, requiring little programming, etc…Week 1 will be a combination of the first 2 chapters. Chapter 1 is about 16 pages and chapter 2 is an additional 14 pages. Participants have 10 days ( ending Sunday, June 10th ) to read the first two chapters, at which point we will move on to the next chapter. Participants are welcome to post their questions for these chapters within this thread and myself, the tutors, and other participants will do the best we can to answer your questions. As the thread is likely to grow to a hundred or more posts, the C++ workshop threads will be closely moderated. Discussions which become narratives, flame-wars, or philosophical will either be removed or moved to another forum, unless entirely relevant to the current chapters. If you have trouble installing your compiler or getting “Hello World” to build, please ask for help. You will not be able to move forward with the workshop until you’ve done those two tasks successfully. Good Luck! Finally, feel free to post quiz-like questions after about 5 days. This will give people an opportunity to test their knowledge and understanding after they’ve had a chance to absorb the information. For questions which require further research then what is in the book, mark the question with an [Extra Credit] tag. Topical Outline of the Reading (Not literal due to copyrights) A History of C++ Which language should be learned first C or C++? How does C++ compare to Java and C#? An introduction to Managed C++ The ANSI Standard Getting in the right mindset to program How an .exe gets created Building your first program. – “Hello World” An introduction to compiler errors A review of Hello World An introduction to “Console Out” An introduction to the Standard Namespace Commenting your code An introduction to functions The difference between Methods and Functions Additional Resources None... Creating and Building a Project w/ VC++ .NET 2005It has come to my attention that the instructions for creating a project/file in the book on pages 19-20 are for Visual C++ 6. Visual C++ .NET 2005 is actually version 8. The correct approach for .NET 2005 is: Step 1: Create an empty project File->New->Project Select 'Win32' from Project types Select 'Win32 Console Application' from the Templates Type the name of the project and the location in the edit box near the bottom. Click OK When the dialog box appears click on "Application Settings" on the left Click "Empty Project" under Additional options. Click Finish Step 2: Add files to your project Right click on your project in the Solution Explorer Add->New Item Click Code in the Categories List Select either C++ File or Header File as appropriate to the task Type the name of the file in the edit box near the bottom. Click Add Building your executable For solutions which only have a single project, Build Solution will do the same as "Build <projName>". Once you have solutions which are containers for multiple projects, you will need to choose either to build individual projects, or the whole solution. I believe all of the tasks we will attempt in this workshop will require only a single project. As such, "Build Solution" should work just fine. Week 1 Errata Chapter 1, Exercise 1 says "...try to guess what it does without running it." If you DO put it into a compiler it will give you a compile error as the listing is not correct. The author meant: #include <iostream> int main() { int x = 5; int y = 7; std::cout << std::endl; std::cout << x + y << " " << x * y; std::cout << std::endl; return 0; } Note that 'endl' is also part of the Standard Namespace, and thus requires std:: at the beginning. [Edited by - jwalsh on May 30, 2007 5:25:07 PM]

CPP Workshop Workshops

Started by JWalsh June 01, 2006 11:40 AM

182 comments, last by Dbproguy 16 years, 4 months ago

Sr_Guapo

876

June 07, 2006 07:42 PM

Great questions jwalsh! If you are unsure of an answer to a question and don't want to post here, feel free to PM one of us tutors. We would be glad to help you!

Sean Henley [C++ Tutor]Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Myotis

122

June 08, 2006 11:04 PM

Quote: Original post by jwalsh
Greetings All,

Namespaces are a not really a complicated topic, but without a more in-depth knowledge of C++ than chapters 1 and 2, it can seem a bit overwhelming. The ironic thing is that many of these questions will be answered in the chapter on namespaces, but many of the questions will answer themselves as you become more intimate with the language. They'll just start to "make sense," as we explore classes, scope, and other items which might warrant a namespace. But as many of you have asked the relevance of namespaces early, I'll post a brief example and explanation.

Purpose of Namespaces:

[...]

Cheers!

Thanks a lot ! I am totally new to Cplusplus and still a beginner to programming in general ( has some basic python experience ) and I had some trouble understanding the namespaces concept. It was the only thing that wasnt clear in my mind from chapters 1-2 but after reading this... ! You answered all the question I was asking myself about namespaces :)

I would also like to point out that the "Teach Yourself Cplusplus in 21 Days, 2nd Edition" has many errors... I dont know if they come back in the 5th edition but if your starting from scratch you could struggle to find why your code doesnt compile. These issues have been answered in this topic but for exemple, the 2th edition book show the Hello world source code as follow :

 1: #include <iostream.h>2:3: int main()4: {5:    cout << "Hello World!\n";6:        return 0;7: }

Now after reading what you guys said I saw what the errors were but it is bad to be learning with a book that is wrong :/ . ( <iostream.h> .h is not standard C++ and cout is missing its namespace ) There seems to be no mention at all of the namespaces in the first 10 chapters and beyond...

P.S. I am using Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition. I have learned about the workshop one day before it started and my "Teach yourself C++ in 21 Days (5th Edition)" is still wandering in the mail, hence why I am using the online 2th edition text book.

P.P.S. Thanks to jwalsh, GameDev and all the tutors for making the workshop :)

Sr_Guapo

876

June 09, 2006 12:38 AM

Yeah, I also noticed a couple errors and I believe they are posted in the first post. If you see any errors, make sure to point them out so we can address them. Nothing is more frustrating then trying to find a bug when the code in the book is wrong. Glad you like the workshop!

Sean Henley [C++ Tutor]Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Vyper_uk

355

June 09, 2006 05:56 AM

I think its a really great thing you're doing here, so thanks!

I just have one request, would it be possible for exercises/quizes/etc to be posted in a seperate topic? This has the advantage of them being easier to find, but the main advantage is that people can still read the main thread for the week without fear of stumbling across answers which they wanted to work out for themselves.

JWalsh

Author

498

June 09, 2006 11:54 AM

Vyper,

Unfortunately, this forum is currently broken, and myself and the tutors are unable to create any new threads. But yes, it was my idea recently that we have a separate thread each week, 1 for student questions, and 1 for Tutor "quizzes." I was also planning to pull out key topics such as compiler/IDE installation and configuration into its own thread.

Unfortunately, with the forum currently broken, the only way to go about doing that is to post in a different forum and then beg the moderators to move the thread into our forum. Also, the GDNet forum software doesn’t allow the moderators to move individual posts...so all the stuff in this thread will have to be manually copied over to the new threads.

In the mean time, I have asked that nobody post the answers to the quizzes, and so far no-one has done so. Hopefully the forum will get fixed soon. On Saturday morning, however, I'll open up the thread for answers to the quiz questions. In that way we gave people a few days to try to answer them on their own, but we also make sure that people are able to check their answers to see if they're correct. Hopefully this method is acceptable to everyone. Next week's thread will be posted Monday morning as will be the case from now on.

Cheers!

Jeromy Walsh
Sr. Tools & Engine Programmer | Software Engineer
Microsoft Windows Phone Team
Chronicles of Elyria (An In-development MMORPG)
GameDevelopedia.com - Blog & Tutorials
GDNet Mentoring: XNA Workshop | C# Workshop | C++ Workshop
"The question is not how far, the question is do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?" - Il Duche, Boondock Saints

Fruny

1,658

June 09, 2006 12:03 PM

I've created a thread for that purpose. Feel free to use it.

jwalsh - if you need other threads created, just PM me.

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." — Brian W. Kernighan

Washu

7,836

June 09, 2006 12:09 PM

[opinion]

Quote: Original post by jwalsh
[Extra Credit] What is self-documenting code? Does that remove the need for comments?

Not sure that I like this question a whole lot, good thing its extra credit. All things considered there are two correct schools of thought on that subject, and as such the answer is quite non-trivial.
[/opinion]

In time the project grows, the ignorance of its devs it shows, with many a convoluted function, it plunges into deep compunction, the price of failure is high, Washu's mirth is nigh.

JWalsh

Author

498

June 09, 2006 12:28 PM

Quote: Original post by Washu
[opinion]
Quote: Original post by jwalsh
[Extra Credit] What is self-documenting code? Does that remove the need for comments?

Not sure that I like this question a whole lot, good thing its extra credit. All things considered there are two correct schools of thought on that subject, and as such the answer is quite non-trivial.
[/opinion]

Agreed. There's not really a *correct* answer to that question. I just want to give people the opportunity to begin thinking about programming style early, so they can decide for themselves the best way to document their code.

[opinion]
Consistency is perhaps the only *correct* solution.
[/opinion]

ph33r

380

June 10, 2006 10:55 AM

Quote: Original post by Fruny
I've created a thread for that purpose. Feel free to use it.

jwalsh - if you need other threads created, just PM me.

Who is going to be the first brave soul to post there answers in the thread?

- Dave

Washu

7,836

June 10, 2006 11:29 AM

Quote: Original post by ph33r
Quote: Original post by Fruny
I've created a thread for that purpose. Feel free to use it.

jwalsh - if you need other threads created, just PM me.

Who is going to be the first brave soul to post there answers in the thread?

- Dave

I don't think anyone need be afraid of answering, the whole point of this is to learn, not to make jests at the expense of each other. I would answer, except that I have no idea what I'm doing with C++ (as evidenced by my journal) [grin][lol][lol][lol]

In time the project grows, the ignorance of its devs it shows, with many a convoluted function, it plunges into deep compunction, the price of failure is high, Washu's mirth is nigh.

C++ Workshop - Getting Started with C++ (Ch. 1 & 2)

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C++ Workshop - Getting Started with C++ (Ch. 1 & 2)

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