point me in the direction:)

[r3vdup]

Hey guys im reading up the tutorial on http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ and in other places. Im wondering what i should learn after i get a 'fairly' good grip on consol programming. Winapi or winsock for example??

edit:also what is another good language to learn while learning cpp, something other than java

-cheers

[Lindley]

Depends what you're interested in. If you want to know how to solve more complex problems, you should check out an algorithms book.

If you're one of those people who doesn't feel like they're making progress until they see some visual results, consider learning OpenGL or a GUI toolkit.

There's little need to learn WinAPI directly. Learning one of the wrappers around it is usually more applicable to real programming.

[r3vdup]

yeah..i do want to see somthing visual, but i dont know which GUI toolkit is easier to understand or do. How is opengl?. any ideas on what toolkit to learn?

And what do you mean by learning a wrapper?

[Hermit]

yeah..i do want to see somthing visual, but i dont know which GUI toolkit is easier to understand or do. How is opengl?. any ideas on what toolkit to learn?

OpenGL is not a GUI toolkit, but a specification that allows you to communicate with 3d graphics hardware. If you're interested in realtime 3d imaging, then OpenGL is probably something you'll want to learn.

And what do you mean by learning a wrapper?

A C++ library that encapsulates the functionality of WinAPI (or some other lower-level, usually C library). Libraries that wrap WinAPI include MFC, WTL and Win32++, as well as the Windows version of wxWidgets.

[r3vdup]

hmm i see. What would you guys recommend for a beginner?

[laserlight]

I like gtkmm for its "modern C++" feel and the fact that it is cross platform (like WxWidgets, which Hermit mentioned). The documentation and tutorials are of an acceptable standard, in my opinion, and that may be more important for a beginner.

[r3vdup]

sweet az!, thanks!. One more thing, what do must i know before going onto GUI, in terms of c++

[Lindley]

Well, the most important thing is to understand the notion of callback functions, I suppose....also, multithreaded programming can be useful.

GUI programming is tangential to everything else. You can wrap a GUI around an extremely basic program or an extremely complex program; you aren't writing more difficult or meaningful code just because you have a GUI. But if that's what you want to learn, then just dive in and come back if you have specific questions.