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Moving from Java to c++

Maurice Nowicki · 2012-11-03T01:14:25

I recently decided to start learning a second language now that I'm quite comfortable with Java. I'm just looking for a few opinions on which ide to use, what I'm looking for is something that's free, or 'free,' that is well documented/used in a lot of tutorials. I feel like the ide will have a bigger impact when learning c++ than it did when I was learning Java as I'll be using features other than the text editor much more often(correct me if I'm wrong), so I'm looking for something that is widely used and therefore easier to google anything I might need to find out about it. I'm familiar with eclipse using Java, I'm not sure how good it is for c++ I know it's an option though. Just from googling around I see a lot of people who love VS but also a small subset of people who absolutely hate it. Also I don't know how hard it'd be to get without spending hundreds of dollars/how good the express edition is. What would you recommend for someone who wants to learn c++ and eventually use it for much more complex programming? for the record; I love intellisense, and I'm using windows 7 on a reasonably fast computer EDIT: this is my reply I posted further down, I just wanted to include it here so more people see it because I'd like to get some more feedback on it but it doesn't really warrant a new thread. Thanks for all the great replies everyone! I think I'm going with Visual studio 2012 express(is there any reason that I might use 2010 instead?). I tried a few tutorials already just using visual c++ express cause apparently I already had it, but it always got build errors. just from simple hello world programs. I'm assuming It's something to do with my setup because i tried several tutorials copying the code exactly and they all got the same error. even the default hello world program errored. hopefully I wont have that issue in VS I would recommend not using an IDE at first, actually. Using a toolchain of separate tools (initially this can be just text editor and compiler, with build control, memory analyzer, static analyzer, debugger added into the mix later one by one) lets you learn faster what is going on. Also, while you have a small amount of code, like just a couple of thousand or ten thousand lines, I don't see an IDE actually doing anything for you over separate tools. Hmmm. that actually sounds like a good idea, my main goal here is to learn everything thoroughly and properly from the beginning so I can be a good c++ programmer soon. I think forcing myself to do that will help me learn things that I'd usually just happily ignore and let my IDE do it for me. How important and how hard is learning all that? Anyone else think this is a good idea? Also while I'm here, should I start with c++ 11? I know nothing about the different versions, is it backwards compatible? is it or will it be the standard soon? which version do you recommend I start with and why? The only concern I might have about that is that its new and might not be as well documented, I love have a wealth of resources when learning something new and complicated like c++. Anyone have any other general suggestions for learning resources or tips? I wanna learn this as thoroughly and as well as possible but I'm also eager to get my hands dirty with some real programming as soon as I can

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by Moe091 October 29, 2012 08:02 PM

20 comments, last by Saruman 11 years, 5 months ago

lride

675

November 02, 2012 08:52 PM

Brace yourself for the horrors of memory management

Nowdays, we got good memory leak detectors that point out the actual location in your source code where the memory leak occured.
My favorite is Visual Leak Detector(compatible with VS 08, 10 and 12)
I do not think the manual memory management is going to be a "horror".

An invisible text.

Saruman

4,339

November 03, 2012 01:14 AM

I do not think the manual memory management is going to be a "horror".

I agree as realistically if using C++11 and RAII properly there shouldn't be much worry about memory management/leaks at all. As mentioned above there are also good tools for tracking things down if needed.. although using std::unique_ptr, std::shared_ptr, and std::weak_ptr effectively really makes things quite simple. I actually find memory management easier in C++11 than using garbage collected languages as the pointer classes are safe and I still control their actual point of destruction... imo it's a win-win.

Moving from Java to c++

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Moving from Java to c++

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