Thread: New to C++

Hello I'am new to C++ and have never programmed in C++ but I have a good understanding of C. I was hoping that someone can tell me which C++ IDE would be best for me to to write my programs on.

And which C++ book would be the easiest for me to start learning from?

What is the difference detween C and C++?

Last of all since I already know C will it be difficult for me to learn C++?

You can work in C++ right now, without any special C++ knowledge, because C++ is nearly a complete superset of C. However, in C++ there are an entirely different set of idioms, techniques and tools available to you that do not exist in C. To have a good understanding of C++ you should avoid bringing your C mindset into C++.

C++ is a multi-paradigm language that allows for the procedural style programming of C but also provides tools for object oriented and generic programming. To get the most out of C++ you need to learn each of these styles and how to choose the best option for different situations.

IMO, the best book for you to start with is Accelerated C++ by Koenig and Moo. It is somewhat accelerated, which should be perfect for someone who is already a programmer. It also tackles the language from a C++ viewpoint instead of a C based viewpoint, which as I said is important if you really want to learn C++. If you want to be more than a casual C++ programmer, follow that book with C++ Coding Standards by Sutter and Alexandrescu. Of course there are many books available that are necessary and/or helpful to the C++ programmer, but IMO those are the two most useful.

Which IDE to use depends on your platform. Assuming Windows, Visual C++ 2003 or 2005 are good choices, and Dev-C++ is a popular free choice. The Visual C++ IDEs might be free depending on which version you get.

There are a lot of good tutorials on the web for C++, since you already know C, the jump to C++ should not be too difficult.

If you were using an IDE for C (esp on windows), you can usually continue to use it for C++.

As for books, you might want to check the board and search, I know there have been discussions on what books are good and whatnot.

There are some differences between C & C++, but a few differences that I know of off hand is, using new and delete instead of malloc and free, polymorphism, more OOP focused programming. Look around here mainly and search, you'll find tons of good stuff answered.

> Last of all since I already know C will it be difficult for me to learn C++?
I've seen your C, and this just isn't true.
http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showthread.php?t=74454

> What is the difference detween C and C++?
http://david.tribble.com/text/cdiffs.htm