C/C++ Tutorials or Books

[AllAmericanJBert]

I would really appreciate if someone could point out some good tutorials or books on how to program in C/C++ (preferably C)


-AllAmericanJBert

[Crosma]

http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/CE.html

This page covers from the basics to more advanced stuff. It was written by one of my lecturers. Unfortunately it's all based around Solaris 8, so some of the sections (like almost all of the stuff to do with multi-threading, multi-processing and Makefiles) probably won't apply to whatever environment you're using.

He's also written what is probably the best Motif documentation on the planet: http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/X_lectur...ler/index.html although it's doubtful that you'll delve into Motif at any point.

[AllAmericanJBert]

OH! I forgot to say that I use Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7 and Windows Vista Premium SP1. Sorry...

---------- Post added at 07:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:42 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Crosma

http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/CE.html

This page covers from the basics to more advanced stuff. It was written by one of my lecturers. Unfortunately it's all based around Solaris 8, so some of the sections (like almost all of the stuff to do with multi-threading, multi-processing and Makefiles) probably won't apply to whatever environment you're using.

He's also written what is probably the best Motif documentation on the planet: http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/X_lectur...ler/index.html although it's doubtful that you'll delve into Motif at any point.

Thanks!

[Crosma]

It doesn't matter which environment you're using too much. More complex stuff, like networking, threading and graphics will vary a lot on each platform, but the beginner level stuff is much the same.

My recommendation is to use MSYS and MinGW on Windows, because it's GCC like Xcode. If you use various abstraction libraries (like SDL, for graphics and sound), it's quite easy to get into the habit of writing code that'll compile and run in both Windows and MacOS.

You should only really go for Visual Studio if you don't care about supporting anything other than Windows.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Crosma

It doesn't matter which environment you're using too much. More complex stuff, like networking, threading and graphics will vary a lot on each platform, but the beginner level stuff is much the same.

My recommendation is to use MSYS and MinGW on Windows, because it's GCC like Xcode. If you use various abstraction libraries (like SDL, for graphics and sound), it's quite easy to get into the habit of writing code that'll compile and run in both Windows and MacOS.

You should only really go for Visual Studio if you don't care about supporting anything other than Windows.

Hes a begininer using Visual Studio Express is a better orgranized and better looking IDE. That is important when your a begininer, setting up MinGW and MSYS is a pain in the ass and an extra step you really dont need to do.

He shouldnt be worrying about cross platform support, he should just be working on LEARNING c++.

[AllAmericanJBert]

Originally Posted by IceColdDuke

Hes a begininer using Visual Studio Express is a better orgranized and better looking IDE. That is important when your a begininer, setting up MinGW and MSYS is a pain in the ass and an extra step you really dont need to do.

He shouldnt be worrying about cross platform support, he should just be working on LEARNING c++.

Which one is easier to use, C or C++? I am anxious to learn .

On the matter of cross platform support... I really don't want to learn cross platform support (now, anyway) I just want to learn the basics, whether it be C or C++.

Now, back to the main subject to this thread... is there a good tutorial, book, video, food (ok that's stretching it much) on C/C++?

[digimonkey]

Neither are technically easier regarding C and C++. There is a quite deal more in C++ to learn, but once you learn it C++ usually provides a lot more shortcuts and dynamic ways of doing things than C.

I'd recommend C++ Primer Plus (5th Addition) . It covers setting up multiple IDEs I believe and teaches you a little bit of C in the first few chapters.

[Crosma]

Originally Posted by digimonkey

Neither are technically easier regarding C and C++. There is a quite deal more in C++ to learn, but once you learn it C++ usually provides a lot more shortcuts and dynamic ways of doing things than C.

In the end, it's the difference between:

C++:
chair.setLegs(4);

C:
setChairLegs(&chair, 4);

C++ is C where structs are called classes and can contain functions, and have access rights. Modern C has every other language feature I can think of.

Classes in C++ are sufficiently complex (while never being essential), that learning C is certainly a better place to start. It's much the same as learning C++, but leaving the classes bit for now.

The only real problem with C is that Microsoft's compiler basically hasn't changed since the 80s, so the more modern C99 features are missing. Which is a shame, because C99's got a couple of great features that C++ does not have equivalents for.

It's interesting really, because I've written a fair bit of C++ in my time, but C is still my weapon of choice.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Crosma

It's interesting really, because I've written a fair bit of C++ in my time, but C is still my weapon of choice.

I still like C over C++ as well its easier to manage memory, for even my standalone programs I use a memory allocation system similar to idTech3.

[Jokke_r]

If he really hasn't done any programming before i would even suggest learning the basics with something even simpler like python or java, Python is especially good for beginners because of it's extremely clean and minimalistic and readable syntax and you don't need to compile it, you run it as is, it's great for learning the very basics of programming when you're just learning about loops and input and output and different data types etc simple text based applications. Or if he want's to get into Object oriented programming he could use java, Eclipse is a wonderful free IDE for java, because lets be honest here, he's not going to be making anything very advanced for atleast a year or atleast a couple of months if he works fast as hell. And with java he won't have to worry about memory management.

Edit's also and python and java are pretty much designed to run on any platform. So if he makes some simple java app on his mac that java app is going to run on windows just like it did on the mac etc.

[peoplessi]

Rather something else than Java, python is way better for beginner.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Jokke_r

Edit's also and python and java are pretty much designed to run on any platform. So if he makes some simple java app on his mac that java app is going to run on windows just like it did on the mac etc.

It depens on what he wants to do, personally i wouldnt touch java or python with a 10 foot pole...:|. I hate java personally I think its a horrible language, which is why I dont do any web programming, closest ive got is ASP/.NET WPF.

[Crosma]

Originally Posted by IceColdDuke

I hate java personally I think its a horrible language, which is why I dont do any web programming, closest ive got is ASP/.NET WPF.

No-one uses Java for web programming apart from IBM. PHP is the most popular web programming language by far, because it's so easy. PHP is also possibly the worst programming language ever. It's very, erm... QBASIC, only less sensible.

I don't recommend Java because it's a requirement that you understand object-orientation well even if you want to write even simple programs. Java's not a bad thing, per se. It's just not a great thing.

C# may be a better choice. Especially with Visual Studio. It's basically Java, but more lenient on the programmer. Visual Studio's C# IDE is pretty good. If you like writing Visual Basic-esque programs, anyway.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Crosma

No-one uses Java for web programming apart from IBM. PHP is the most popular web programming language by far, because it's so easy. PHP is also possibly the worst programming language ever. It's very, erm... QBASIC, only less sensible.

I don't recommend Java because it's a requirement that you understand object-orientation well even if you want to write even simple programs. Java's not a bad thing, per se. It's just not a great thing.

C# may be a better choice. Especially with Visual Studio. It's basically Java, but more lenient on the programmer. Visual Studio's C# IDE is pretty good. If you like writing Visual Basic-esque programs, anyway.

Pretty much it comes down to preference. It all compiles down to MIL if ur using Visual Studio so it doesnt matter if your using, C#, or JAVA. PHP is a horrible, and theres no proper IDE for it that im aware of.

I just grew up in C and C++ and I know how to debug it well which is why I recommened it. Other programmers including my dad like Visual Basic(another language which I don't like). Basically it all depens what you want to do. Programming is more time consuming and tedious than anything else. Which is why I recommened coding in something that yields impressive results with little work on the programmers part.

Kind of my end goal with Dark Reckoning is to implement most of the game in LUA scripting, and than post tutorials on my website how to modify the game kind of a "learning programming tutorial". Cause some of my friends arent exactlly the most patiant people in the world so to teach someone like that programming is a worthless endeavor. But if you teach an idiot how to do something impressive with little work they will more than likelly want to dig deaper into programming which is what I think programming teachers should focus on especially in earlly on programming classes.

Wow I typed that and im drunk :P.

[Jokke_r]

My point was though that if you want to learn to program then you should do it properly, from the ground up, and not just jump into editing source codes and stuff like that. You should start small with basic output, then input then how to use various data types, manipulating strings, loops, different searching algorithms, reading and writing to files.
Those are some of the things that you must know and understand imo before even trying to do anything. And you don't have to know Object orientation when using java, you can churn out completely procedural code with java if that is what you prefer, but if you're going to use any of javas built in libraries then you will inevitably bump into objects.

[Crosma]

Originally Posted by IceColdDuke

Pretty much it comes down to preference. It all compiles down to MIL if ur using Visual Studio so it doesnt matter if your using, C#, or JAVA. PHP is a horrible, and theres no proper IDE for it that im aware of.

I think you're thinking of J#, which is just C# with keywords and syntax that more closely resemble Java. Proper Java and C# have different APIs and run on different virtual machines. Plus Java programming requires precision, whereas C# often guesses what you mean (probably a bad thing, but whatever).

Zend Studio and Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools) are both official PHP IDEs. PDT is actually really nice, if you have to write PHP. I just use Eclipse for pretty much everything these days, unless I'm working with Microsoft stuff. C# in Eclipse is a waste of time when Visual Studio Express is available (yay VirtualBox).

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Jokke_r

My point was though that if you want to learn to program then you should do it properly, from the ground up, and not just jump into editing source codes and stuff like that. You should start small with basic output, then input then how to use various data types, manipulating strings, loops, different searching algorithms, reading and writing to files.
Those are some of the things that you must know and understand imo before even trying to do anything. And you don't have to know Object orientation when using java, you can churn out completely procedural code with java if that is what you prefer, but if you're going to use any of javas built in libraries then you will inevitably bump into objects.

That mentallity is EXACTLLY why i dropped out of college. Some people don't learn conventially. Believe it or not I got into gaming cause of Duke3d, but I learned programming by modifying games such as Quake and Wolfenstein. Even though I have John Carmacks style of programming which can argueablly be a bad thing, but the point is people learn in different ways, i would NEVER have been able to survive a structed programming class. I took one actually in college and it was SOO IRRIATING how the teacher was teaching, and her style of programming.

And i got my deeper understanding off C/C++ by learning assemblly from modifying and dissassembling Diablo/Hellfire. Thats how I started making connections on what shit did, and this is back when I was 7 or 8. The point is when I was struggling to learn programming I modified and learned from what other people did and made various connections that way. Now programming is 2nd nature to me.

My dad also had ur mentality when I was a kid, he wanted me to learn Visual Basic first. I hated Visual Basic because at the time you couldn't do any cool shit with it. I am a visual learner which is why I got in to gaming. You can program smoething, and its exciting when your code yields awesome results.

This is how I think programming should be taught, learning conventially IS NOT FOR EVERYONE, esp myself.

@Crosma
I actually never knew there was a IDE at all for PHP, i thought people just programmed there stuff in notepad : ).

ANYONE that learns Java first in my opinion is destined to fail. You guys can argue with me all you want, but I believe if you learn the lower level stuff first you can learn ANYTHING after that.

[AllAmericanJBert]

Originally Posted by IceColdDuke

It depens on what he wants to do...

Game programming...

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by AllAmericanJBert

Game programming...

My suggesstion I know everyone on here will disagree with me, is modify your favorite game, and start learning the basics at the same time. Its a multitask learning process that worked for me .

[AllAmericanJBert]

Originally Posted by IceColdDuke

My suggesstion I know everyone on here will disagree with me, is modify your favorite game, and start learning the basics at the same time. Its a multitask learning process that worked for me .

I will try that! Btw, what game do you think I should modify? I would really like to try to modify DOOM and Wolfenstein (but the engine is written in assembly).

[Jokke_r]

How old are you? Go take a course in computer science, although a lot of people are self learned when it comes to things like programming it's not as easy as some may think. You need a solid understanding of the basics and to understand why certain things are done in a certain way etc, start small. Average people who study computer science won't even be able to make a game from scratch after their first year, or well if by game i mean something graphical and not text based. And that's something you should know imo, don't expect to be able to do wonders, even by todays standard i'd say Doom or wolfenstein is a big thing to tackle with no experience.

[peoplessi]

I disagree on that method, you can do it on the side, while you learn the basics. Bit by bit you begin to understand more of how things work.

Going from Tic-Tac-Toe to some Space Invaders clone. That's a good route.

If ICD started programming when he was 7-8 years old, that's totally different thing, he has had the time to learn things... well differently. Totally different enviroment, and different people. That could work for you too, but let's be honest here, most people learn best from the basics. C/C++ doesn't matter that much, basic principles transfer well between (most) languages. Nobody hasn't suggested Assembly languages yet...

There are good books available nowdays, that give you good basic understanding what coding means.

Beginning C++ Through Game Programming

I'd suggest this, it's _really_ easy to grasp, and for beginner that's good. Also, the fact that examples are game related doesn't make it any worse. I know some will recommend C++/C bibles, but for beginner those aren't really THAT usefull to be honest. When that book is read and understood - then you can move on more demanding reading.

I don't believe in that notion that more harder you make it for yourself, the better it is. It isn't in the most cases. BUT of course people will disagree

[Bad Sector]

I would recommend learning C, then C++ and then go back to C once you realize how convoluted C++ has become :-). Also i like to write stuff in Lazarus/FreePascal and Java, but i usually do tool/gui stuff there.

The RayFaster 2 editor is made using Java and SWT (SWT is IBM's GUI toolkit, which powers Eclipse and design-wise is inferior to Swing that comes with Java, but its much simpler toolkit to work with, uses the operating system native widgets (buttons, etc) and is much faster). I wrote it in about three days, including the rendering code. People ask what you want to do because using the same language for everything is not a good idea. You have to know a bunch of different languages to pick the best for what you want to do. I recommend at least C, Java and Python (or some other scripting language).

Fortunately most languages are syntactically almost the same and the logic behind writing programs is always the same (with minor differences). Which means you should learn programming, not a language :-). Of course you also need to learn a language because you have to put your knowledge in practice. Which is why when learning a language for the first time is hard - you also learn how to program, how to write algorithms, how to analyze problems, etc.

So what language do i recommend to start with? There isn't an easy answer for that. I would recommend C because it is very simple to learn (much simpler than Java or Python), but you need to know how the computer works, how programs are executed, how memory is used, etc. A classic example of a problem most people have with C is understanding pointers. They have this problem because they don't know how memory is used by the CPU. So C isn't a clear answer because it requires that you know a bunch of stuff before you use it or have the will to learn about how the computer as you learn the language. Which for a first time language practically means that you have to learn how the computer works, how to write algorithms and the language itself at the same time.

Should you learn a higher level language, which hides these issues? If so, Java isn't a good choice since its just a middle solution between C/C++ and scripting languages. In this case Python would be a better solution. When i was writing a column about teaching programming in a magazine i chose Python and PyGame because i wouldn't have to explain in detail the extra required stuff about how memory works in C. I still had to explain Python-specific stuff like lists, dictionaries, etc though (it took me about three issues to make an introduction to the language).

Python is a nice choice for learning how to write algorithms because you focus mostly on that. Also the code is clean and easy to read and forces you to learn proper code indentation since the language's syntax depends on it (most new programmers' code is never indented which is a bad habit to develop).

But since you want to learn game programming, you must learn at some point the underlying workings of the computer. And this point should be as soon as possible.

So i think a good recommendation is to learn a language like Python or JavaScript (which is available in any browser near you, you can get visual results with little effort and the syntax is more C-like than Python, but on the other hand it doesn't force you to learn proper indentation and most of the code found on the Internet is very bad) to get a grasp on how programming is, how to write simple algorithms (try arrays, lists, sorting, searching, etc - both Python and JavaScript provide these features as language features, especially Python, but a programmer must know these to write decent code) and see something on screen (this is easier with JavaScript). Once you feel comfortable with your creations, you can go deeper and start learning C and how the computer actually works.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Jokke_r

How old are you? Go take a course in computer science, although a lot of people are self learned when it comes to things like programming it's not as easy as some may think. You need a solid understanding of the basics and to understand why certain things are done in a certain way etc, start small. Average people who study computer science won't even be able to make a game from scratch after their first year, or well if by game i mean something graphical and not text based. And that's something you should know imo, don't expect to be able to do wonders, even by todays standard i'd say Doom or wolfenstein is a big thing to tackle with no experience.

I always hated comments like that when I was learning :P. People said I couldnt do A,B, and C and I prooved there asses wrong numerous times .

Bottom line is you have to learn in a way that you can remember what ever your trying to study. I dont learn conventually and never did which is why I offered a different approach to programming : ).

[Jokke_r]

the problem is, that you might go years and years programming and suddenly realising some super simple thing which might have saved you lots and lots of time and code but you never learned it since you did everything your own way.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Jokke_r

the problem is, that you might go years and years programming and suddenly realising some super simple thing which might have saved you lots and lots of time and code but you never learned it since you did everything your own way.

You do that all the time because your constantlly learning. But if you learn your own way, and you run into a road block youll know how to look up how to do A, B, and C, because your used to looking shit up.

[Jokke_r]

You still look up stuff on your own if you're in school. During the lecture they might go over some specific thing, then they give you a task where you might need to use that specific thing in an unexpected way, if you run into trouble you research online. The point is that you will not miss essential stuff. Like some guy might be doing tons of input loops at various places since he didn't know he could just make a method which takes a query string as input, prints it and then does the input loop and returns the input value.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Jokke_r

You still look up stuff on your own if you're in school. During the lecture they might go over some specific thing, then they give you a task where you might need to use that specific thing in an unexpected way, if you run into trouble you research online. The point is that you will not miss essential stuff. Like some guy might be doing tons of input loops at various places since he didn't know he could just make a method which takes a query string as input, prints it and then does the input loop and returns the input value.

Just curious why are you so hell bent on "college is the only way to learn programming". We dont even know how old he is, his financel status or anything.

College was not for me, and im glad I learned programming on my own, cause ive seen the type of people that teach programming classes, are in general quite wierd .

Bottom line is each person has learns in his or her own way. If your teacher doesnt get through to you, than your just wasting your money.

[Crosma]

Originally Posted by Jokke_r

You still look up stuff on your own if you're in school.

School is the worst place to learn anything. You're better off with good texts (books/whatever), free time and will.

[CoR]

A bit older: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~phister/K_n_R/index.html

Just use google you can find a ton of free E-books etc.

[Crosma]

Originally Posted by CoR

A bit older: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~phister/K_n_R/index.html

Classic book. Highly recommended. It kind of assumes that you're not having any difficulty understanding anything though. Not that it ever gets all that advanced.

[Jokke_r]

Originally Posted by Crosma

School is the worst place to learn anything. You're better off with good texts (books/whatever), free time and will.

Yes perhaps if you are in the united states, that might be the case. Our schools are generally very good and best of all free, my college education doesn't cost me anything, in fact i get paid. Not saying you can't learn programming completely on your own, but in that case you should follow some tutorial for beginners which covers the basics, not just go randomly digging into existing source code not know what the hell you're even looking at. I didn't even attend the course on Object oriented programming/java, if i ever got stuck with some task (which i didn't) i could just look it up on the web. I had a pretty firm understanding of the basics from our introductory course where we used python and transitioning from python to java was no biggy and there are tons and tons of java resources on the web. It's always easier to learn when you follow some plan, and when you have weekly tasks you must complete it keeps you on the right track.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Crosma

School is the worst place to learn anything. You're better off with good texts (books/whatever), free time and will.

Exactlly, if you want to learn youll always set time, and goals up for yourself. Now if your talking about Eurapean schools I might agree with you, but sense obviouslly im a American, learning programming in a college in the US, is def **not** recommended I agree with Crosma.

[Superczar]

Originally Posted by Crosma

School is the worst place to learn anything. You're better off with good texts (books/whatever), free time and will.

Crosma is dead on. I wasted 2 and a half semesters and we never got past the basics and into anything worthwhile, fun, or useful. I learned far more on my own, though I lack the time and discipline to actually "get good at it". If you do goto school for it, Computer Science at a university is not the way - find a trade/tech school that specifically offers a programmming course, at least that way you skip all the other bullshit.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Superczar

If you do goto school for it, Computer Science at a university is not the way - find a trade/tech school that specifically offers a programmming course, at least that way you skip all the other bullshit.

Which is why I hated school, college for most carriers doesnt teach you anything practical, you usually have to learn practicality "on the job".

[Jokke_r]

All our programming courses are practical, all you're doing there is writing code, there are separate courses for data structures, algorithms advanced math and physics etc.

[Bad Sector]

I've learned programming by myself. Back then i wanted to go to some university, but i was only 7 years old, what did i knew ?

These days i find most of the people who learned programming in the university or some other school to produce crap code. The very few who actually write good code are people who spent a lot of time outside the school learning by themselves and used the school only as a starting place.

[Jokke_r]

Well majority of everything is crap. I'd say that from the people in my year there are perhaps some 5pl from 40 that produce smart fast code, the rest simply don't know how to think outside the box. It's not so much the fault of the school but the fault of the students, some people just aren't as good at some things compared to others.

Also i don't understand this major school hostility you yanks have. In Finland you won't get a job if you don't have a degree. Sure i could go with my high school diploma and work in some factory, but if i wan't to work with programming/game design i need a degree. And sure some people don't need school to learn programming so what thats not all the school offers, math, physics, logic etc is also important stuff. Besides i don't believe many of you are into industrial engineering stuff where you program large machines etc. There's a lot more stuff programmers are good for than games and pc software.

[IceColdDuke]

Unfortunetlly I will agree with you on the fact you need a degree or a STRONG ASS portfolio to get a job anywhere in the programming industry. Because the jobs are so compedative and there shipping ALOT of the jobs over seas.

But I have noticed that alot of college kids that have learned structured programming dont survive in the real world because they dont think outside the box.

Lets look at a practical example in the idTech3 code, in tr_bsp.c under the ParseFace function:

sfaceSize = ( int ) &((srfSurfaceFace_t *)0)->points[numPoints];

College kids would look at that and go wtf? But people that look at practical examples and build there knowlage off of that know exactlly what that line does...we might cringe at it, but we know how to read highlly optimized code.

Which is actually why Microsoft programming internships are actually really good, if you want too look at shitty organized code thats highlly optmized with every concievable nasty memory hack that you can think off, the Windows source code is the best way to learn how NOT to code .

[Bad Sector]

This looks more like a brain-dump of the programmer who wrote it than something that actually does anything more efficient (practically) :-P.