New C++ programmers resources

[squig]

Hey guys/gals,

Ill be teaching myself c++ from scratch (zero experience) and I will be learning through the internet. What I am offering is for newcomers to tag along and we can learn together. I will be scouring the internet for resources (such as notes and homework problems that other people posted) and using them for practice and posting my solutions so anyone can do it on their own and compare and kind of see another approach. Ill post them to this thread to save anyone the frustration of gathering the information themselves. Ill be referencing other threads and forums for quick reads that is relevant to a logical learning progression. Tell any newbies like myself about this to help them out.
Cool! let's dew this ish!

-squig


PS not sure how this will work with a thread, i might create a dropbox to organize everything. for now ill be on the forum.

Happy coding.

[OReubens]

just FYI.

This might work for some languages, but C++ is both "deep" and "broad", which makes it slightly less ideal for this sort of self study, in particular because you're likely to bump into "old" C/C++ code that is no longer according to modern standards, code that's blatantly wrong, and code with other issues. Without the knowledge to separate the gems from the rubble, this could end up being problematic.

That's why for self study, books are still the best approach, because usually at least you'll be geting a fairly consistent approach to things. Unfortunately there's A LOT of bad beginner books out there. And of the good ones, some aren't up to C++11 spec. Soem books also are written from the point of view that you already know how to program in another language. I can't really make any recommendations yourself, I don't read enough "beginner" books to really advise on this. What I had been recommending is Accelerated C++ (Koenig and Moo), but this is a book from 2000, I don't know if it has been updated/reworked.

Ideally, you want to find a mentor, someone doing C++ professionally for a living that's willing to teach and guide/council you.


also, as a personal advice from my own mentoring others... do NOT learn C++ by first learning C. Avoid the "old" C way of doing things as much as possible. Any book/tutorial/teacher that starts by teaching you the C things, is just flat out wrong. EMbrace C++ from the start, learn to use STL and the containers and don't get sidestepped into "reinventing all of them" as "basic examples", because you will never ever need those basic examples like that, yes, you'll probably somewhere in your careerpath need to make your own containers, but getting comfortable with the STL way of diing things, will make you BETTER at doing those later rather than trying to make your own as 'first steps'.

[2kaud]

also, as a personal advice from my own mentoring others... do NOT learn C++ by first learning C. Avoid the "old" C way of doing things as much as possible. Any book/tutorial/teacher that starts by teaching you the C things, is just flat out wrong. EMbrace C++ from the start, learn to use STL and the containers and don't get sidestepped into "reinventing all of them" as "basic examples", because you will never ever need those basic examples like that, yes, you'll probably somewhere in your careerpath need to make your own containers, but getting comfortable with the STL way of diing things, will make you BETTER at doing those later rather than trying to make your own as 'first steps'.

I agree. This is where many, many c++ beginner books fall down - and many internet resource sites. They teach things like c char arrays for strings instead of teaching c++ string, c arrays instead of c++ vectors etc. If you are going to learn c++, learn c++ (including the STL which should be treated as part of c++ and not some optional add-on as is often the case) and not c with classes which is what many students learn - even from taught courses. There are a lot of 'poor' c++ sites and 'poor' resources available and unfortunately a c++ beginner doesn't know which are good or bad. Just because a book has good reviews doesn't make it a 'good' c++ book! Even well know c++ learning sites can contain 'howlers' which could confuse beginners.

As OReubens says in post #2, if at all possible try to find an experienced c++ mentor.

If you post code here we'll provide advice and guidance.