So... How did you learn?

Right now I'm able to program some simple console program. I'm starting to get the feeling of some fairly simple functions and getting started with using various libraries.

So this question(s) is for all you super gurus or for that matter anyone out there.

How did you learn? What are all tutorials you used? What kind of stuff did you start out with? And how long did it take you to start making more complex programs?

But really, I would appreciate replies to this just so I can advance more and make some freakin cool progs like you ppl can. THX!

Oh yeah, and I use Visual C++ 6.0 (Standard).

Read. Read anything and everything you can get your hands on that concerns programming. This will give you a knowledge base that you can use for when you actually sit down to program. By reading I mean books, manuals, newsgroups, forums, emails, signs of the zodiac if they pertain to C++. ;)

That's really as simple as it gets, read about programming and write programs that use that knowledge.

-Prelude

I am in the same boat as C++n00b I also just started C++ but have a bunch of my buds helping me out. They showed me a good site which is:

cplusplus.com

also there are plenty out there go to yahoo and type in "C++ Tutorials" thousands of websites will come up

Why do all the new guys choose names like "I-am-a-newbie"?
You don't get more help because of that so you might aswell have something that you can use when you have become good enough to not be newbies anymore...

I had great college professors. One professor especially, good old Ahmad. (no one ever could say let alone spell his last name)

reading books, boards like these, good teachers.. thats the way to learn anything

IMHO there's nothing better than a good teacher with whom you can actual learn [ face2face]. Books and Boards aren't always the solution esp if you know nothing or little.

but unforunately you dont get good teachers all the time :(


>>I had great college professors.<<
our first program in c++ class started with -->

void main()..

and would have probably used it forever [infact i used it a lot early] hadn't it been for people here. :)

Basically echo Prelude. Read and practice.

Ihsir, nothing wrong with starting like that. Ahmad actually started with void main() so we didn't get confused early. When he taught us about functions then he introduced us to
int main( void ) and
int main( int argc, char **argv ).

He liked to do things in small steps so that everyone followed along. Sadly, I had him for a Java class and we were moving at a pretty fast pace, and then stopped to review for a whole week. When a few of us asked him why, he said he was worried that he was losing some people in the class and wanted to make sure they didn't get completely lost before he moved on. I think a good teacher can make all the difference.

Read and think about what you are reading. And get your hands dirty. read a chapter then go write a prog with what you just learned,something that you thought out your self that use what you know.

taylorguitarman:

sorry i didn't give enough info. we had already started learning basic/medium level c++ programming in last year at school [classes/files etc] so it was assumed that we'll go into higher stuff when in college.

our school teacher also started with void but had also briefed us about int main and said that since we wont be programming real stuff and since our programs wont be large void will be ok.

In fact your Ahmad and our school teacher were quite similar in teaching methods.

I remember when we started learning classes he said that classes has 2 types of members Public and Private, when on of us said "What about protected" he replied that right now there are just two types for you people later i'll increase it to 3

:D

So many people who post to these boards asking if a certain piece of code works or not don't want to spend the 30 seconds it would take typing the code into their compiler and testing it out for themselves. They seem to have an aversion to this for some reason. Instead they come here and ask the question and it may take 5 minutes or an hour or a couple days to get a response from somebody plus they may get chewed out or flamed for whatever reason. People, if you want to learn, you got to get your hands dirty. Try out your bit of code on your machine first, then if you can't get it to work, post a message here.