A Guide To Programming In C++ For Beginner

Contents: Chapter 1. A first look at the IDE and some simple history on Windows and C++/C/ C#. Chapter 2. A look at language differences and language features. Chapter 3. ASCII, and how it comes into play. Chapter 4. A first "Hello World" type program. Chapetr 5. What is an "int" and how does it compare to other types? Chapter 6. Using different types with typecasting. Chapter 7. Simple Input/Output. Chapter 8. What libraries are better for a task? Chapter 9. How do files communicate between .cpp and .h. Chapter 10. How to use a program with a .cpp and a .h file. Chapter 11. How do computers store memory, and why do they need bits/bytes? Chapter 12. How to use the debugger for simple errors. Chapter 13. Why do compilers need to have so much information? Chapter 14. Chapter 1: A first look at the IDE and some simple history on Windows and C++/C/ C# Before we start this book off, I would like to say that this is NOT goin g to be a step by step guide for simple console projects. I'll define what I mea n by that with an analogy. When a mother pushes her young out of the nest, it is n't because she wants to see it fall; she wants to see if it can fly, because sh e thinks that it's ready. In this case, I will give you the amount of informatio n you will need to "sight read" any program. I will not always give step by step explainations for every line of code. New things will always be explained, or o ld things used in new ways. Of course this will only come into play in the more advanced parts of the book, or when it would be too time consuming to explain it all. Other than that, some requirements (or rather recommendations, because you can still do very well without them) for this book are: 1. A basic understanding of Geometry. (recommended, but only barely. Just If/The n statements and logic are needed) 2. The will to read many pages of words, and on occasion, some code 3. A Windows OS (operating system) 4. An IDE (Integrated Developement Enviornment) like Visual C++, or CodeBlocks, or any other you can find. If you do not meet the requirments than you should probably stop reading here, o r gather them and continue. So onto the simple history of Windows (Which can be skipped if you reall y just don't care). You may ask, why is this important? Well if you think about it logicly, you need to know where something comes from. If you don't learn the history of something, than theoreticaly, you are just making things more difficu lt on yourself. For example: even though this book says "C++"...you can't really learn C++ until you have learned the whole C language. You may think that the 2 are different, but C++ is essentialy the C language with bells and whistles. Bu t more on that later, back to the history of Windows! Windows started off as a s imple OS. It didn't do more than just simple text input and output, and even the n you had to know some basic programming to use the text editor. I wasn't alive when the first ones came out, and I have never used them. However they sound lik e more of a hastle than they were worth, which is most likely the reason why the

y didn't quickly cath on. They were simply a text writer, and for most people it seemed like pen and paper was much more practicle. Then along came the Windows 1.0! It had more speed, and was much more user friendly. Still, the average pers on would not own one at this time, as you still really could not do much. But th en came the release of Windows 2! It had more speed, and it was better at handli ng graphics. It could allow you to have overlapped windows, icons on the desktop , and you could customize the appearence (to an extent). This attracted develope rs, as they now had something to really work with. Then came Windows 3. It was t he best version yet! It sold millions of copies, making it the first OS from Win dows to be used in homes. It had 16 Colors, which was a huge deal, and it allowe d us to have the friendly file manager, and a printing manager. But this was not hing to Windows NT! It had a 32 bit operating system (we will talk about bits an d what it means to have 32 bits in a later chapter, but just know that it means that the computer doubled its memory capacity!), and they also had better graphi cs, MUCH better speed, and was considered a milestone in Windows technology. The n, here comes the best version yet! Windows 95! It was the first version to have the classic start button that we know today! It was so important because it had the internet at its desposal! Other features were the taskbar, emailing, easy i nstall/uninstall hardware capabilites, and the minimize and maximize button.The next versions of windows were still important, but really nothing changes much w ith the appearence. Windows XP and Vista are more commonly used (or have been us ed) by a large amount of people, so it isn't worth the time to go into. However just because I said nothing happened doesn't mean that there isn't anything that didn't. I say that because there was a large amount of graphical updates in the way that computers handled graphics, along with some new features now and then, and there was a lot of internal changes to the OS in the way it handled memory, and how much you had to use. However I think that the important parts have been covered.