programming lagunae - what one?

For those of you who were responding to my previous post about pointers, re-read what I wrote, I said they were the most difficult thing to learn in programming, not that they were difficult. I should have made my point more clear. A better way to put it is that I believe we should be teaching the subject that has the potential to be the most challenging first, so once you have mastered it, everything is a piece of cake (and object oriented programming should heavily use pointers ....).
 
I said they were the most difficult thing to learn in programming, not that they were difficult.
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agreed, the only time this can get confusing is when working with mutlilayered pointer arrays, or in perl arrays of pointers pointing to hashes where the key value pair points to some other object (or another array of pointers :) )
 
I would also recomend C/C++, otherwise I'd suggest Java.

With C/C++, you can do a lot of great things. Don't let everyone scare you with all this pointer nonsense...it really is not a difficult concept, and quite honestly, there are a lot more indepth techinical areas of those two languages that are far more confusing and difficult than pointers are. Learning C++ will allow you to build console applications quickly and easily, however getting a handle on the windows 32 API to make your own UI is going to be a lot more confusing than learning pointers. I see a lot of applications being produced now with C/C++ coded dll's and using VB as a front end GUI. C++ being an OOP language is not entirely true. It is not actually a true OOP language as Java or C# are, however C++ is a compilation of OOP and non-OOP, allowing you to basically mimic any other language out there.

The reason I mention Java is simply because you already have a good grasp on a lot of web development. With Java, you can learn a great deal about the methodologies behind the curtain when it comes to OOP. Java is a true OOP language, and you will also be able to create applets and run them in a browser or as a desktop application...and NO Java is not the same as Javascript.

As far as learning Object Oriented development, start small and read about classes and structures. I'd recommend any Bjorn Stroustrup books...I do NOT recomment any "* for dummies" books. They tend to teach you how to hack through your development, whereas you really want your code to be elegant and efficient. You are going to have a real hard time programming games with C++ at this level. Chances are, you won't be able to make a graphical game for another couple years if you start now (specially if you are learning everything on your own)...however with the C++ route...that also opens up a whole world of DirectX possibilities :)
 
Unless I missed it, I couldn't find any of his books on amazon or anything, I'll try checking my loacl library, it's huge. Any idea's where to purshae it? Thanks.
 
well he's the creator of C++...so you should be able to find his books pretty much anywhere they sell programming textbooks

I may have spelt his name wrong though...but I'm too lazy to look for you, so hopefully someone else does
 
Jerkstore said:
I do NOT recomment any "* for dummies" books. They tend to teach you how to hack through your development, whereas you really want your code to be elegant and efficient.
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Amen to that. The C++ for dummies book is like what, 200 pages? Most others are like what, close to a thousand? Where did those 800 pages go :eek: ?
 
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