What next??

Hey, I'm trying to decide what to learn next. I know how to program pretty well, and I am now pretty comfortable with C++. I understand the OO aspect and am ready to move on.

I realize that I should learn templates, but I'd really like to write some small semi-useful apps asap. So I'm torn between leaning templates or Qt. Would it be a bad idea to learn Qt first??

Thanks,

Corey

If QT is anything like Windows API programming, it's going to take a bit of time to learn. You can learn lots of GUI programming without using templates, or any other advanced features of C++.
Charles Petzold (in his book "Programming Windows") only uses C.

So, study them both at the same time, and you'll probably be comfortable with templates long before you're comfortable with
QT.

[EDIT]
Salem, thanks for helping me out :)

I think you would be better off learning how to use templates first. Templates are useful for ALL programs that manage data, whereas knowing Qt or some other X toolkit is only useful for programs that demand a graphic interface. Also, I've noticed that Linux users seem to be a lot more in-touch and comfortable with text-based progs than Win users, maybe because Linux text-mode(for lack of a better term) is 32-bit. The way I see it, that kinda lessens the demand for creating a GUI program. So basically, I am saying that you should definately learn templates first and hold off on Xlib or Qt or Motif or whatever for a bit.

what might Qt be?

I don't know how familiar you are with X windows but...typically the GUI that you use on a UNIX system like Linux is the X windows system. Like Microsoft's GUI, X windows has an API(I guess that's what you'd call it) called Xlib. However, there is a LOT of everhead when you program with Xlib, and Xlib is not object-oriented. Qt is a level of abstraction for Xlib which reduces overhead and enables object-orientation by allowing you to design GUI objects called "widgets". So that's Qt in a nutshell