Thread: Ask me about C / C++

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Yep, C code runs circles around VB code.

Damned straight. Once compiled, does VB still toss in enormous wodges of non-essential crap from over-stuffed libraries?

Not really, it's fairly compressed. There is some overhead, for instance, strings have about 4 levels of abstraction around then so every string manipulation requires about 4 times the work as in C++. VB is designed to be a learning tool, not a professional programming app, so the compiler is not very efficient at optimizing.

What is the best book on C to read?

"The C Programming Language"

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Not really, it's fairly compressed. There is some overhead, for instance, strings have about 4 levels of abstraction around then so every string manipulation requires about 4 times the work as in C++. VB is designed to be a learning tool, not a professional programming app, so the compiler is not very efficient at optimizing.

I can still remember compiling "Hello World" for lulz in the old QB 4.5.. 14 Kb for: print "Hello World!"

C compiled it much tighter only needing the include for stdio.h for the printf.

Doing it in my old Borland Assembler only took a handful of bytes once compiled and linked to knock out a .com file with a label of:

mssg db 'Hello World!",13,10,'$'

then nothing more than:

lea dx, mssg
mov ah, 4ch
Int 21

Those DOS calls sure are handy. You could do it also with Int 9, but that's a bit more work.

After awhile, you'd start to recognize the actual machine code for some of the calls and the like.

Seems silly now, but, I can lay claim to having once owned a 10 meg HD, so the "who cares" attitude of today was a luxury unaffordable back then.

code is fun, I've not bothered with it in years.. kinda makes me want to get my fingers back in shape.

.

Good for you. I grew up with some less than optimal machines and I got really good at doing optimizations, I still do it. Qbasic was fun

Code:

? "QBasic is awesome!"

How do you find the execution time and memory imprint of your code?
(I'm using windows, btw)

Your memory imprint should be visible in your Task Manager (ctrl+alt+del)

As for execution time, all you need to do it have your program record the time when it starts, then record it again when it quits. Subtract the two and print the result

I've always been interested in learning C/C++, but could never find any good reference/learning sources.

Having an understanding of php and some sql (basic sql functions such as update/insert/delete/drop, enough to maintain a database), aswell as basic Javascript, how hard do you figure it would be to move into the C languages?