I need to learn more.

Hi. I finished my C All-in-one Desktop Reference for Dummies book, and I don't have anything to do now. I know all about the C language itself, keywords, operators, variables, arrays, structures, pointers, loops, the funny ?: conditional thingy, creating functions, accessing files, writing and reading files etc...

What I want to do is start learning something new. How to access information from drives maybe, or how to download/upload files from/to servers on the internet, how to make GUIs, how to make my program run on different processor threads, etcetera. And I want to learn how to do this in C before starting with C++ (or keep learning the bit I know of Python).

The first thing I want to do is the download/upload things from/to the internet, since I have $4/month GoDaddy server I can test with. So... how can I do it? Could somebody point me out to the right direction? I know it is possible to do this in C, but I really have no idea how to start, and I've even been searching for books and googleing websites that can show me but I can't find them. The only thing I found was that I need some sort of libraries for these tasks... what are libraries? Are those like header files or something?

- I'm on a Windows XP machine, Intel P4 w/ HT Tech, using Notepad++ as editor and MinGW as compiler w/Msys - Just in case.

Thanks a lot.

There's really no need to wait with C++. Most API and stuff is C anyway, so you can learn C while learning C++. The best is that you can wrap them inside your own classes and make a nice framework to make it easier on your when coding.

There's lots of GUI libraries out there, such as GTK, MFC, etc.
And a good place to check is CodeProjects. Lots of tutorials and code there!

Cool stuff. Right now I am checking GTK+ on this page: http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html ... Is this what I need? And, what exactly is a library?

Typically a framework, in this case. The goal is allow you to create GUIs without so much problems. Using pure Win32 API to do it is a pain even for the experienced. Not to mention, so many things can go wrong.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Typically a framework, in this case. The goal is allow you to create GUIs without so much problems. Using pure Win32 API to do it is a pain even for the experienced. Not to mention, so many things can go wrong.

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When you say pure Win32 API... is it something like this?

Code:

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#include <windows.h>

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,
                        HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                        PSTR szCmdLine,
                        int iCmdShow)
{
        MessageBox (NULL, "Hello", "Hello Demo", MB_OK);
        return (0);
}

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And also... I'm seeing this GTK+ page and I don't understand anything... there are so many packages and stuff. Do you know about a book or something that can help starters like me with programming GUI?

Yes, that's Win32. But programming a GUI is far more complicated.
Also, unfortunately, I don't know much about GTK. I use MFC myself, but unless you have Standard+ edition of Visual Studio (not free), you're not going to touch MFC...

That's the problem, I don't have any of the Microsoft Visual whatever things, and I don't program in Linux... That's why I'm really not sure of what to do next, and that's why I thought about making a program that downloads files from the internet.

It seems that I still have a lot more to discover. I don't understand why this For Dummies book didn't point me to a more advanced book or something. :-(

Heh, Microsoft Visual Studio is an IDE to make executables for Windows. Very nice GUI.
I'm sure someone else has experience with some GUI libraries, however.

Holy crap Visual Studio 2008 Standard costs $300 and Professional costs $800!!! I think I have to find something else to do.

Even if I buy that, I woudn't know how to start. I'll just explore something else or start with C++.

Hehehe. If you're a student, you can get it free, otherwise I think you need to look elsewhere ;)

Thanks a lot I think I'll start learning C++. I've seen in sourceforge, almost every nice GUI program is written in C++, and I'm downloading this instant Visual C++ Express (free!) to see what I can do with it.

Thanks a lot.

Well... good luck. You're certainly going to need it.

hahaha, thats quality...!

How about contributing something instead of posting spam or other meaningless stuff?

Well, I'm back from downloading that Visual C++ Express, and I can't believe how full of crap this piece of software is.

Now I really understand why you said that I would really need luck.

Oh and... some question (this topic is really mixed up)

How come g++ (MinGW) makes a 477kb C++ "Hello World" program, when gcc makes a 15kb C "Hello World" program and VC++ makes a 47kb C "Hello World" program and a 38.5kb C++ "Hello World" Program?

Probably because Mingw statically links the library code inside the EXE.
Beware of debug/release configurations, as well, since debug bloats the size quite well.
And 30 KB is not much.

Size of the executable depends on your linking options. Obviously, smaller executable usually means that more components are included in DLL's, and less is part of the original executable.

C++ uses a lot of template code, and that can grow quite a bit.

--
Mats

Btw, my C++ Hello World application is 8.5KB (Release), so it beats all of the compilers.
Debug is 38.5KB.
(Visual Studio 2008 Professional)

Well... I have to start learning how to use Visual C++

When I said full of crap, I didn't mean that it is a bad compiler, but that it has so many windows everywhere, so many little text all around the place, the start page is kind of weird, when you select to make a new project a wizard pops up etc. But, at least the help is useful and got me up and running.
(Visual Studio Express 2008)

Ah, but all these windows has a meaning and is useful in some way. And if you just think they're in the way, you can hide them.
Click on the sticky thing to make it auto-hide and appear only when you move the mouse there.
Or you can use the Full Screen feature (I don't remember where it's hidden) to enlarge the code window to Full Screen.
If you continue to use it, you will get used to it. It always takes a little time before you start to find your way around an IDE.

in release mode you also have optimize for speed/optimize for size options.
The last (with dynamic linking of run-time libraries) should give the smallest size...

Quote:

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How about contributing something instead of posting spam or other meaningless stuff?

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Eh? i do beg your pardon

and whats spam?

Quote:

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How about contributing something instead of posting spam or other meaningless stuff

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eh? oh I do beg your pardon, how about you lighten up?

maybe i should just start banging on about indentation in future each time i feel like adding a comment.

There didn't seem any real point to a message like:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rogster001

hahaha, thats quality...!

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Especially when not known to where it was directed at. Thus it was a useless reply because it didn't contribute anything - at all - to the thread or discussion. That's all I was hinting at.

sorry 'twas just i was tickled by the comment 'good luck you are certainly going to need it' i was assuming my reply would go straight in to the next comment along, thus directly relating... but hey, not refreshing my page i would not know where it was going in,,, sooo