Just a comment. :)

[Kittyfang]

This is just a comment, so please, take it with a grain of salt. But, when I decided to learn C++, I decided to learn it because, as a house wife, I was bored of doing nothing. I spent a lot of time in school, before my marriage, and I was missing "learning stuff".

So, with that said, I also want to add that I just LOVE the tutorial here, but why is it that most tutorials do not talk about the Compilers that you need. Nor explain that you need one. I understand that most people learning C++ are kinda aware that you need one, but not everyone is studying it in school, with a teacher guiding them trough the initial steps. I was lucky enough to have a friend helping me, but like a good teacher, he simply told me that "yes, you need something, a program, when your C++ will run". But that's all he was willing to tell me. I add to look up the rest on my own. It goes without saying that it was overwhelming.

And even if you DO find a tutorial explaining that you need a compiler. Most will not explain what a compiler is, what the general features of one are or hor you should even start a program. For example, I spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure out if I should start a project (in Bloodshed's Dev-c++) by choosing a Window's Application or a Console Application. I finally figured out that part.

now, please, don't think I'm whining or sweating very small stuff. But like I said, not everyone is learning this at school. Some people, like me, just want to learn it from scratch and small details like this, specially in the beginning, will make you wanna cry. :)

Julie

[Duthomhas]

Alas, that grief never goes away. It may abate for a while, but the storm is never far from the calm.

Forums like these are found all over the net, but they generally deal only with the basics, targeting --as you noted-- beginning university students, who have hands-on help with the unspoken, "obvious" things like "What's a compiler, why do I need it, and how do I use one?"

Once you decide to do something -interesting- then you hit the wall again. Post asking about some random piece of hardware, esoteric things like clearing the screen, inter-process communication, <your favorite GUI toolkit>, etc. and suddenly you find the people either know nothing about it or who only think they know a lot about it.

Whenever I teach programming, I always make sure to spend a large portion of time teaching and modeling how to find and use information on your own (from books and internet). Learning to learn is one of the unspoken truths to learning to program. That is, programming is learning.

I'm a new poster here myself, but I'm still pleased you found the site useful. The C++ reference documentation found here is in my best-of-the-best list on the internet. I actually made myself my own homepage (which is just an HTML file on my computer) that is nothing more than a huge collection of links to useful sites. Whenever I find some gem of information on the internet, I add it to my homepage, so that it is never more than a click away.

I hope you can continue to learn and enjoy. I'll be in and out here, and there are a few other regulars here who know what they are talking about.

:-)

[Geralds mod]

Hey I'm with you Julie, I'm only in 9th grade and I'm not learning programming at my high school until next year.

So I guess I have to tough it out for a year.
Also I will recommend this site: http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/

I have been going there for the past few days and it is helping me out a lot.
Good luck learning C++ Julie.

Geralds Mod