Need some advice on a few things

[neil]

Hey, I'd really appreciate if you guys having C++ experience gave
advice with some questions I'm pondering over...

Books: What book do you recommend for someone about to approach the
intermediate stage? I was tempted to get "How to Program - by Detels"
but unsure incase someone advised differently.

Resources: Is there any other place apart from usenet to visit and
communicate with C++ users that paste code for feedback or whatever,
much like vbforums for VB and java.sun.com for Java. Basically want to
get used to the code and style much more.

Compilers/IDE: I'm approaching intermediate stage and I guess notepad
will be useless pretty soon... shareware or freeware (I may be doing
GUI in the future, and I mainly use Windows as my main OS).

Also, relating to the compiler question previously, I'm pretty
confused about the new Visual C++ .NET version, I know some of you may
recommend Visual C++ but not sure what version. From what I know .NET
creates a different executable from what other compilers do (you need
..NET framework installed on the users machine to run the compiled
executable). So is it better to avoid this and go for Visual C++ v6.0?
I've heard that the .NET edition has more/updated headers or whatever
you call them that comes with it.

Thanks for any help given!

 

[John Carson]

Hey, I'd really appreciate if you guys having C++ experience gave
advice with some questions I'm pondering over...

Books: What book do you recommend for someone about to approach the
intermediate stage? I was tempted to get "How to Program - by Detels"
but unsure incase someone advised differently.

Deitel is old-fashioned. I recommend Bruce Eckel, Thinking in C++. You can
get it as a free download or as a book.

http://mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html

A lot of people here recommend Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo, Accelerated
C++ (I haven't read it).

http://www.acceleratedcpp.com/

Also, relating to the compiler question previously, I'm pretty
confused about the new Visual C++ .NET version, I know some of you may
recommend Visual C++ but not sure what version. From what I know .NET
creates a different executable from what other compilers do (you need
.NET framework installed on the users machine to run the compiled
executable). So is it better to avoid this and go for Visual C++ v6.0?
I've heard that the .NET edition has more/updated headers or whatever
you call them that comes with it.

VC++.Net can be used to produce conventional C++ programs and is far more
standards compliant than VC++6. If getting a Microsoft compiler, there is no
question that you should get VC++.Net.

 

[Nick Hounsome]

Compilers/IDE: I'm approaching intermediate stage and I guess notepad
will be useless pretty soon... shareware or freeware (I may be doing
GUI in the future, and I mainly use Windows as my main OS).

Thanks - I don't often get to laugh out loud when I read a posting!
What did you use when you were a novice? edlin?

Seriously I would consider using vim from www.vim.org Although you might
find it hard going to start with it will run on whatever other OSes you use
(you imply that there are more) and integrates well with gcc since you seem
to be going free/shareware.

It's not really my thing but I suspect that you probably need to cough up
for Visual C++ or somesuch if you want to do Windows GUI. If you are just
learning stuff then it might be cheaper and more advisable to try Java
because you ca get free IDEs and the GUI is portable across OS

 

[Derek Baker]

Hey, I'd really appreciate if you guys having C++ experience gave
advice with some questions I'm pondering over...

Books: What book do you recommend for someone about to approach the
intermediate stage? I was tempted to get "How to Program - by Detels"
but unsure incase someone advised differently.

Resources: Is there any other place apart from usenet to visit and
communicate with C++ users that paste code for feedback or whatever,
much like vbforums for VB and java.sun.com for Java. Basically want to
get used to the code and style much more.

Compilers/IDE: I'm approaching intermediate stage and I guess notepad
will be useless pretty soon... shareware or freeware (I may be doing
GUI in the future, and I mainly use Windows as my main OS).

Also, relating to the compiler question previously, I'm pretty
confused about the new Visual C++ .NET version, I know some of you may
recommend Visual C++ but not sure what version. From what I know .NET
creates a different executable from what other compilers do (you need
.NET framework installed on the users machine to run the compiled
executable). So is it better to avoid this and go for Visual C++ v6.0?
I've heard that the .NET edition has more/updated headers or whatever
you call them that comes with it.

Thanks for any help given!

http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/devcpp.html

Don't worry that it's a beta, it's a very late one.

 

[Jon Bell]

Books: What book do you recommend for someone about to approach the
intermediate stage? I was tempted to get "How to Program - by Detels"
but unsure incase someone advised differently.

Stay away from Deitel & Deitel, at least from their C++ book. As someone
else has pointed out, it's very old-fashioned. I strongly recommend
Koenig and Moo's "Accelerated C++" as a modern book that uses the power of
the standard library from the beginning.

 

[neil]

Stay away from Deitel & Deitel, at least from their C++ book. As someone
else has pointed out, it's very old-fashioned. I strongly recommend
Koenig and Moo's "Accelerated C++" as a modern book that uses the power of
the standard library from the beginning.

Is there any other books that I should get, like advanced, visual,
references and so on. What do you suggest?