how to become a better programmer

[YahooAccount]

Hi,
I just finished taking a class in C++, I did well on this course but did not do excellent. Struggled with the testing aspect of the course. What advice would you recommend to become a better programmer? I see people in here have a different way of writing their programs. What other website(s) can I use to get a profound understanding of C++.

[John87Connor]

to become a better programmer, write much code! try different concepts (to achieve the same goal), figure out the pros and cons of each way of coding

to become a more qualified programmer, learn ALL about your preferred language (c++), the best way to do this is (of course) reading a book

some things (like the STL STandardLibrary) can be understood easier (quicker) watching tutorial videos on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/user/BoQianTheProgrammer

[Cubbi]

YahooAccount wrote:

I see people in here have a different way of writing their programs

What do you mean by "a different way"?

And yes, to be a better programmer, do programming. C++ in particular is a very practical language, built to solve software engineering problems. Also see if you're up to being able to understand "Best Practices" books from http://stackoverflow.com/a/388282

[kingkush]

Just try to write simple programs with what you understand. For instance try making a random number generator for picking lottery numbers. Or if you learned enough maybe even making a rock paper scissors game. Just little things to practice what you know and some thing you want to learn. Writing the code if better than just reading about it. You'll learn more writing than reading.

[YahooAccount]

Thank you everyone for your input

@John87Connor, I started watching this channel. I like it a lot more than some of the other channels. I've seen

@Cubbi,
Hey, so I was taught to used standard library before the int main, but i have seen programmers here write with every c-out. I have seen different libraries being used and c-in. Things, I have not covered yet. Thank you for the link.

@kingkush ,
Yeah, I learned more from this site than from reading my textbook ( and multiple youtube channel). I did not think about making a game out of it. Will try it out. thanks!

[helios]

Hey, so I was taught to used standard library before the int main, but i have seen programmers here write with every c-out. I have seen different libraries being used and c-in. Things, I have not covered yet. Thank you for the link.

There are as many styles as there are programmers. Different programmers will pick different styles based on their past experiences and what they believe will lead to better code, and what their own definition of "better" is.
For example, some people use using namespace std; either because they don't know any better or because they think that the added brevity offsets the problems that dumping an entire namespace into the global namespace creates. I prefer my code to be as explicit and unambiguous as possible, so, at least with std, I always write std:: explicitly.
As another example, I prefer to always write this-> when referencing members, following my previous rule of minimizing ambiguity. If someone comes along and looks at my code, they can immediately know whether a particular usage refers to a global, a member, or what. Some people think that this advantage doesn't make up for the added verbosity of all those this->s, so they only write them to disambiguate for the compiler.