Thread: Tell me about C/C++

Originally Posted by khh

There are a lot of things you need system calls for, though, like GUI and scanning directories and such. So Firefox must be using preprocessor directives, or libraries which uses them.

I said little preprocessor. I've looked at the Firefox code because I reverse engineered a chunk of it. All of this stuff uses a NPWindow object, almost all of the preprocessor is in there.

Console programs are normally opened from the terminal, though. And if you do that, then the terminal doesn't close and you'll see the output. It's just if you open it by double clicking on the executable that you won't see the text, but then that's no how the programs are supposed to work. If you want those kinds of programs you need GUI.

But stick with the terminal while learning, GUIs can be a pain.

Funny thing, I've got C++ as a university subject this year. Of the things we'll learn this year, there was only one thing I haven't done before.

But I'm sure that you'll learn better technique and optimization techniques that you currently don't know. Assuming the professor is competent, I had a professor in college who was a good C++ programmer in 1995, but he stuck to those techniques, so we were taught no modern designs. C++ coding changes very quickly, if you don't stay on top of it, you can fall behind quickly.

I can't wait till I get to GUIs. That will be kick ass.

C++ is a nightmare with GUIs because the language isn't designed for it. I just spent 3 full workdays creating a frame, a dynamic set of menus, a status bar, and a web preferences pane.

Luckily, there are graphical ways to do it in 5 minutes, which is what I recommend using when starting out. The only reason I don't use that is because I need more control over them.

Haha, wow.

But still... it would be worth it.

I applied to a computer games course which consists of programming in C++ (I think...) and 3d modelling. I want to get into that (although I applied to physics too, at the time I wanted that more)

But yea... I'm just learning this so I have a bit of knowledge before going there (If I get in)

Originally Posted by ninja9578

I said little preprocessor. I've looked at the Firefox code because I reverse engineered a chunk of it. All of this stuff uses a NPWindow object, almost all of the preprocessor is in there.

Ah, okai.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

But stick with the terminal while learning, GUIs can be a pain.

Yeah, I know. I tried learning GUI a while back, but I simply gave up on it for a while. I didn't have a clue about what I was doing, or what the code elements meant or anything. Figured I'd just write a console program with some of the same functionality and port it when I was ready :p

Originally Posted by ninja9578

But I'm sure that you'll learn better technique and optimization techniques that you currently don't know. Assuming the professor is competent, I had a professor in college who was a good C++ programmer in 1995, but he stuck to those techniques, so we were taught no modern designs. C++ coding changes very quickly, if you don't stay on top of it, you can fall behind quickly.

Yeah, I hope so. There must be things I've missed, since I've mostly thought myself what I know. But I think he must be a good programmer, he's taught that specific course for the two year it's run, and he taught the Java course the engineers attended instead. He ought to be good by now.

Good Java Programmer != Good C++ Programmer, very different designs.

Also, almost all of your functionality can be done using the console. I'm currently tearing apart an application so that the functionality is completely disjoint for the main window. The window runs by itself and loads the functionality as a dll.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Good Java Programmer != Good C++ Programmer, very different designs.

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but he's an experienced programmer, he's used quite a few different languages, so I'm guessing he'd want to teach the language properly. Also, he started introducing "best practise" rules the second lesson (accurate ones). That's a good sign.

If you have Ubuntu, I'll show you how to create a simple GUI program if you want. I can do it on Windows too, but I like using the wxWidgets library for that, and that's impossible to compile on Windows, I've tried and failed at that many times. I'm not looking forward to the next major release because I'm planning on recompiling it as a dynamic library.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

If you have Ubuntu, I'll show you how to create a simple GUI program if you want. I can do it on Windows too, but I like using the wxWidgets library for that, and that's impossible to compile on Windows, I've tried and failed at that many times. I'm not looking forward to the next major release because I'm planning on recompiling it as a dynamic library.

Yeah, that would be nice. I've got Windows and Ubuntu as dual boot. Me and a friend once thought about making an application with wxWidgets, but... we never quite got there.

wxWidgets works perfectly fine on Windows Vista... Code::Blocks with wxSmith does a lot of the work, but it's perfectly possible to code everything by hand with a wx Template.