learning Modern C++

[arnuld]

hai all,

i am standing on a "crossroad to C++". I am here in front of you as i
have a problem. i will be brief. Please do not think: "arnuld is sick",
i am really struggling & doing hard-work to become a Modern C++
Programmer & i am feeling as if i am standing on a crossroad. i am
asking because every time i made a decision on my own, in my past, i
always ran into huge wastage of time, money & effort. that is why i am
posting it here:

--Problem-- as you folks know that i want to learn Modern C++ & in my
country "C++ Primer" 4/e & "Accelerate d C++" are not available & being
a jobless person i dont have money to order anything from abroad. i
have these books on my shelf:

1.) "Thinking in C++" 2/e
2.) "C++ Primer" 3/e
3.) "The C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup
4.) An illegal version of "C++ Primer" 4/e as a .chm file on my
Desktop.

i have these 5 options:

1.) read "C++ Primer 4/e" online: cant be done. with online copies
productivity goes down to 20%. reading "physically " really makes the
difference in understanding & learning the language.

2.) i took print-outs of 2-3-4 chapters of C++ Primer 4/e & read them &
found them excellent, though i took a while to understand. it has 800
pages, for me, it means 1000 pages of print outs from my EPSON
dot-matrix in 8 separate folders. it will be very difficult to learn
this way & what if i want to search for some phrase/ideas in C++, i am
"gone" in this case. i speak from experience, i tried this with
"Practical Common Lisp" & trust me, it was huge time wastage with much
less productivity & output (well, that is why Stroustrup created C++
:-)

3.) read "Bruce Eckel": tried that, he makes heavy-use of C. i dont
know C, i dont want to, i want C++.

4.) read "C++ Primer" 3/e: utterly incomprehensibl e to me.

4.) Learn C first -OOA & D book -C++. an excellent way to confuse
myself as i have found that learning "vectors, strings, new-delete"
1st, makes learning "C character arrays & free-malloc" much easier.
(while the opposite is not true, i tried it 2 months ago)

5.) Go directly with Stroustrup: +ve point is i will learn "Pure C++",
-ve point is i dont have any real-life coding experience, hence i found
it *too* dense & 50% of the times i did not understand what exactly he
was talink about. (but i do know what are variables, functions &
classes + strings, vectors, new delete from C++)

from all of this, i concluded Stroustrup is the only way to go. i just
need to dwell into it. what do you suggest?

thanks for your time

- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogapot.com

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* arnuld:

>
from all of this, i concluded Stroustrup is the only way to go. i just
need to dwell into it. what do you suggest?

Go for Stroustrup. That's the book I used (but then I had background
from C, and also, it was the first edition, which was a very slim book
compared to later ones aimed at US market where books are sold by
weight). Just read it /slowly/, like each page is one chapter, and
don't forget, try out things on your computer, e.g. /for each page/!

--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

[Joseph Paterson]

arnuld wrote:

hai all,

i am standing on a "crossroad to C++". I am here in front of you as i
have a problem. i will be brief. Please do not think: "arnuld is sick",
i am really struggling & doing hard-work to become a Modern C++
Programmer & i am feeling as if i am standing on a crossroad. i am
asking because every time i made a decision on my own, in my past, i
always ran into huge wastage of time, money & effort. that is why i am
posting it here:

--Problem-- as you folks know that i want to learn Modern C++ & in my
country "C++ Primer" 4/e & "Accelerate d C++" are not available & being
a jobless person i dont have money to order anything from abroad. i
have these books on my shelf:

1.) "Thinking in C++" 2/e
2.) "C++ Primer" 3/e
3.) "The C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup
4.) An illegal version of "C++ Primer" 4/e as a .chm file on my
Desktop.

i have these 5 options:

1.) read "C++ Primer 4/e" online: cant be done. with online copies
productivity goes down to 20%. reading "physically " really makes the
difference in understanding & learning the language.

2.) i took print-outs of 2-3-4 chapters of C++ Primer 4/e & read them &
found them excellent, though i took a while to understand. it has 800
pages, for me, it means 1000 pages of print outs from my EPSON
dot-matrix in 8 separate folders. it will be very difficult to learn
this way & what if i want to search for some phrase/ideas in C++, i am
"gone" in this case. i speak from experience, i tried this with
"Practical Common Lisp" & trust me, it was huge time wastage with much
less productivity & output (well, that is why Stroustrup created C++
:-)

3.) read "Bruce Eckel": tried that, he makes heavy-use of C. i dont
know C, i dont want to, i want C++.

4.) read "C++ Primer" 3/e: utterly incomprehensibl e to me.

4.) Learn C first -OOA & D book -C++. an excellent way to confuse
myself as i have found that learning "vectors, strings, new-delete"
1st, makes learning "C character arrays & free-malloc" much easier.
(while the opposite is not true, i tried it 2 months ago)

5.) Go directly with Stroustrup: +ve point is i will learn "Pure C++",
-ve point is i dont have any real-life coding experience, hence i found
it *too* dense & 50% of the times i did not understand what exactly he
was talink about. (but i do know what are variables, functions &
classes + strings, vectors, new delete from C++)

from all of this, i concluded Stroustrup is the only way to go. i just
need to dwell into it. what do you suggest?

thanks for your time

- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogapot.com

I definitely think you should learn C as well though. You can't go past
"The C Programming Language", by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M.
Ritchie.

[Roland Pibinger]

On 25 Oct 2006 10:37:59 -0700, "arnuld" <ar*****@gmail. comwrote:

>i am standing on a "crossroad to C++". I am here in front of you as i
have a problem. i will be brief. Please do not think: "arnuld is sick",
i am really struggling & doing hard-work to become a Modern C++
Programmer & i am feeling as if i am standing on a crossroad. i am
asking because every time i made a decision on my own, in my past, i
always ran into huge wastage of time, money & effort. that is why i am
posting it here:
--Problem-- as you folks know that i want to learn Modern C++ & in my
country "C++ Primer" 4/e & "Accelerate d C++" are not available & being
a jobless person i dont have money to order anything from abroad. i
have these books on my shelf:

Why do you want to learn old-fashioned 'Modern C++'? If I were
'standing on a crossroad' I would learn C, a modern scripting language
like Ruby or Python and - depending on the job market - either Java
(language and platform(s)) or C# and .NET.

Best wishes,
Roland Pibinger

[arnuld]

Joseph Paterson wrote:

I definitely think you should learn C as well though.

learning new langugae is always a good idea.

You can't go past "The C Programming Language", by Brian W. Kernighan
and Dennis M. Ritchie.

what it has to do with C++?

[mlimber]

arnuld wrote:

i am standing on a "crossroad to C++". I am here in front of you as i
have a problem. i will be brief. Please do not think: "arnuld is sick",
i am really struggling & doing hard-work to become a Modern C++
Programmer & i am feeling as if i am standing on a crossroad. i am
asking because every time i made a decision on my own, in my past, i
always ran into huge wastage of time, money & effort. that is why i am
posting it here:

You should say, "posting it here repeatedly." :-)

--Problem-- as you folks know that i want to learn Modern C++ & in my
country "C++ Primer" 4/e & "Accelerate d C++" are not available & being
a jobless person i dont have money to order anything from abroad. i
have these books on my shelf:

1.) "Thinking in C++" 2/e
2.) "C++ Primer" 3/e
3.) "The C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup
4.) An illegal version of "C++ Primer" 4/e as a .chm file on my
Desktop.

i have these 5 options:

1.) read "C++ Primer 4/e" online: cant be done. with online copies
productivity goes down to 20%. reading "physically " really makes the
difference in understanding & learning the language.

2.) i took print-outs of 2-3-4 chapters of C++ Primer 4/e & read them &
found them excellent, though i took a while to understand. it has 800
pages, for me, it means 1000 pages of print outs from my EPSON
dot-matrix in 8 separate folders. it will be very difficult to learn
this way & what if i want to search for some phrase/ideas in C++, i am
"gone" in this case. i speak from experience, i tried this with
"Practical Common Lisp" & trust me, it was huge time wastage with much
less productivity & output (well, that is why Stroustrup created C++
:-)

Add to that the ethical issues involved in stolen books, and you have a
clear-cut case against this one, IMHO.

3.) read "Bruce Eckel": tried that, he makes heavy-use of C. i dont
know C, i dont want to, i want C++.

You have a hard-copy of this? If so, it might be your best bet.

4.) read "C++ Primer" 3/e: utterly incomprehensibl e to me.

Possibly dated, too. I'm not sure.

4.) Learn C first -OOA & D book -C++. an excellent way to confuse
myself

Right. C++ is not C.

as i have found that learning "vectors, strings, new-delete"
1st, makes learning "C character arrays & free-malloc" much easier.
(while the opposite is not true, i tried it 2 months ago)

Right. That's why _Accelerated C++_ does it in that order.

5.) Go directly with Stroustrup: +ve point is i will learn "Pure C++",
-ve point is i dont have any real-life coding experience, hence i found
it *too* dense & 50% of the times i did not understand what exactly he
was talink about. (but i do know what are variables, functions &
classes + strings, vectors, new delete from C++)

I presume you mean the 3rd ed. This is an excellent book, but it is not
for beginners. I would suggest learning the basics somewhere else.

from all of this, i concluded Stroustrup is the only way to go. i just
need to dwell into it. what do you suggest?

You're going to have to climb the learning curve somewhere, and I'd say
_Thinking in C++_ is the best of your options. Do the exercises Eckel
gives, and practice practice practice. Maybe you can join an
open-source project of some sort to get additional experience.

- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogapot.com

Hmm, that doesn't look like a blog to me. Why put it in your sig?

Cheers! --M

[arnuld]

Roland Pibinger wrote:

Why do you want to learn old-fashioned 'Modern C++'?

what is the reason behind this "saying"?

If "Modern C++" is old-fashioned, what exactly you will say for C.

If I were
'standing on a crossroad' I would learn C, a modern scripting language
like Ruby or Python and - depending on the job market - either Java
(language and platform(s)) or C# and .NET.

this is exactly what i am talking about, "depending on the job market".
i chose C++ because in India, i have found majority of jobs require
standalone "C++, UNIX user experience, OOA & D knowledge + 1-2 years of
real-life coding". i dont like Jave, i hate Java & i use UNIX not
buggy Windows & their crappy tools like ".NET" & "non-sense a.k.a VB".
sorry & i could not resist.

i used Windows for 4 years. since Dec 2005, i am using Debian Sarge & i
feel i am years ahead in my "technical development".

Best wishes,

thanks ;-)

Roland Pibinger

[arnuld]

mlimber wrote:

arnuld wrote:

i am standing on a "crossroad to C++". I am here in front of you as i
have a problem. i will be brief. Please do not think: "arnuld is sick",
i am really struggling & doing hard-work to become a Modern C++
Programmer & i am feeling as if i am standing on a crossroad. i am
asking because every time i made a decision on my own, in my past, i
always ran into huge wastage of time, money & effort. that is why i am
posting it here:

You should say, "posting it here repeatedly." :-)

Ha...Ha.....you naughty boy ;-)

Add to that the ethical issues involved in stolen books, and you have a
clear-cut case against this one, IMHO.

Hmmm.... i think of these issues now.

3.) read "Bruce Eckel": tried that, he makes heavy-use of C. i dont
know C, i dont want to, i want C++.

You have a hard-copy of this? If so, it might be your best bet.

it is a good book but i do not understand most of his programmes
because of "too much of C" is used as basics.

5.) Go directly with Stroustrup: +ve point is i will learn "Pure C++",
-ve point is i dont have any real-life coding experience, hence i found
it *too* dense & 50% of the times i did not understand what exactly he
was talink about. (but i do know what are variables, functions &
classes + strings, vectors, new delete from C++)

I presume you mean the 3rd ed. This is an excellent book, but it is not
for beginners. I would suggest learning the basics somewhere else.

yes, it is 3rd edition. after reading it for whole day i felt
"Stroustrup " created C++ to solve some of the most painful issues of
Sofware Engineering (the ones where C was quite a terrible choice)

You're going to have to climb the learning curve somewhere, and I'd say
_Thinking in C++_ is the best of your options. Do the exercises Eckel
gives, and practice practice practice. Maybe you can join an
open-source project of some sort to get additional experience.

GNU is my destination for contributions.

- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogapot.com

Hmm, that doesn't look like a blog to me. Why put it in your sig?

really very sorry for that "typo". corrected this time. it is my blog &
i want to get comments from some "experience d" individuals regarding my
article "On The Perils of Java Schools".

Cheers! --M

OK, i say Cheers! ;-)

-- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogspot.com

[mlimber]

arnuld wrote:

Joseph Paterson wrote:

I definitely think you should learn C as well though.

learning new langugae is always a good idea.

Wrong. There is likely no good reason for you to learn COBOL or PL/I.
Not only is it not "a good idea," but if you won't use it, then it's a
waste of your time and money.

With C, the case is certainly more debatable, but I'd say learn C later
or if/when you actually need it (the FAQ agrees:
http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lit...html#faq-28.2).
C is different than C++. For instance, the former requires more
low-level resource management like malloc/free and fopen/fclose, while
the latter automates such tasks with fundamental techniques like RAII.
C requires return codes to indicate errors, while C++ provides
exceptions. Etc. etc. If you want to learn C++, learn C++ not C (or
Java or Smalltalk or whatever).

Cheers! --M

[arnuld]

Wrong. There is likely no good reason for you to learn COBOL or PL/I.

Not only is it not "a good idea," but if you won't use it, then it's a
waste of your time and money.

Hmmm...... i think you are *right*. what do 90% of people say in this
world is really way, way wrong. either it needs to be changed or
modified, like you did. i usually do it, in my daily habits like
talking, responding to certain situations or giving an answer to
someone's question, the way you did & nearly 99.99% of the times people
see right & left and remain silent as they do not find any logic of
their questions, after listening to my answer.

today you taught me :-)

With C, the case is certainly more debatable, but I'd say learn C later
or if/when you actually need it (the FAQ agrees:
http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lit...html#faq-28.2).

FAQ is good place, i always consult it first & follow it. (it started
just last week as i saw that my 4 months of experience "matches" with
"Learning OO/C++" part of FAQs. i could have saved a lot of time just
by following the advice from FAQ).

C is different than C++. For instance, the former requires more
low-level resource management like malloc/free and fopen/fclose, while
the latter automates such tasks with fundamental techniques like RAII.
C requires return codes to indicate errors, while C++ provides
exceptions. Etc. etc. If you want to learn C++, learn C++ not C (or
Java or Smalltalk or whatever).

i cant explain whether the reason is "low level resource management" or
"something else" but it happened with me in case of "vectors, strings,
new-delete" & "C style character strings, arrays, free malloc, as i
told you in my earlier post.

Cheers! --M

OK... i say Cheers! again ;-)

one more thing, i have my signatures in "gmail" but how can i have my
signatures here in posting answers? i put my name & blog address
everytime manually :-(