What should I learn next?

[Janman]

Hello
I primary want to be a software developer, and secondary I want to be game programmer.
I have the book "Learn c++ in 21 days" from Jesse Libery, and I have learned pretty much everything from the book. But what to learn now?
Should I look a little on Visual C++? Or should I start with OpenGL? But if I learn OpenGL, will I still be able to be a software developer?
Can you prefer any books?
And can you share your experience on being a programmer?
I hope you can help me.

- Janman

[quirkyusername]

this comic has been posted on these forums before but I found it hilarious

http://abstrusegoose.com/249

you cannot learn c++ in any depth in 21 days. Once you've understood most of the syntax then the best thing you can do to improve is practice, practice and practice some more. More reading won't help you yet. If you encounter problems, check out this site's tutorials http://cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ or post on the forum.

Good luck, and have fun!

[PanGalactic]

I'm not sure what "Learn C++ in 21 Days" covers, so this may or may not be appropriate. But here are my suggestions:

Start learning the Boost libraries. These are ones I use all the time:

Test
Smart Pointer
Lexical Cast
Range
String Algorithm
Date_Time
Bind
Function
Lambda
Any
Optional
Tuple
Range
Ref
Thread

MPL (Get the book "C++ Template Metaprogramming")

For game-related work, the Boost Graph library could be very useful. There is at least one book on this library.

Make sure you learn other languages along the way, especially ones that introduce you to important concepts such as dynamic typing, functional programming, meta-object protocols, delegates, introspection, etc.

[Janman]

I'm new to this forum, so I dont know how to "reply" an answer, but I hope this will be fine.

#quirkyusername
Funny comix, but the sad part is, that its true. In my question, I said I have read the book, but I didn't say I managed to do it in 21 days ;)


#PanGalactic
So the libraries you posted are used by programmers almost always?

And by "Other" language, which one do you mean?
Do you think Java will be fine?

[Mugabi Allan]

java is a very strong language, i am reading c++ and my next language is java by default.

programming languages rise in their power and capabilities. java, python are pretty good ones. i think java will be good.

[Athar]

C++ in 21 days is a horrible book and certainly not sufficient. It glosses over the entire C++ part of the standard library: the container classes, the standard algorithms, etc. The book's coverage of these topics is limited to that they exist and short code example for each of std::vector, std::list, std::fill and std::for_each. That's it, pretty much (at least in my edition).
You'll have to catch up on that knowledge, so this time, you should read the C++ Primer and Effective C++ (in that order).
Then you need to put the things you learned into practice by writing applications of various sorts. You'll quickly realize that you can't do much with standard C++ alone, which will lead to you making yourself familiar with various libraries that provide the functionality you're looking for.

Do you think Java will be fine?

More like LISP, Python, Perl, ...

[PanGalactic]

@Athar +1

Wow -- I had no idea that any Intro to C++ book would skip something so important to the C++ language as the C++ standard library.

@Janman Athar is right; you absolutely *must* learn the STL first. The Boost libraries I listed are used by many C++ developers. Most of the ones I listed will be included in the next C++ language revision.