Thank you for the replies, I just feel a bit overwhelmed and I don't know anyone else who's studying programming right now, my friends aren't serious, so I don't know if I'm doing good or if I'm having results.
Anyway thanks again, and I'll read the book again at my own pace and do paper coding with my own version of the examples.
I know a bit of java, html, and php (I made a basic website once) and after 2 weeks and I'm in chapter 6. Am i too slow? too fast?
Thorough study so you understand each step and travelling at your own pace is the ideal. If you follow this and do not unnecessarily repeat steps, then you are doing very well. Comparing to the pace of other people is not reliable in many ways. You will forget most of what you learn and need to return to those chapters anyhow, so don't worry about anything. In reality, all programmers take years to make everything stick permanently in memory and to make all the endless relationship connections. I've been at it a couple years and have a long way to go in declaring myself an expert. By the way, added to this, some of what you are learning will be rarely used by you. Don't sweat it.
Work at your pace and be thorough.
I would say it really depends on you. C++ isn't the easiest of languages to get off the bat, and it can take quite a while to really master it as opposed to learning it. Even if you finish the book and learning how it works, it takes time and practice to really master it. It depends mainly on how quickly you grasp concepts. Frankly, whatever works for you is good. I wouldn't worry about whether you are going fast enough. Work on understanding the language rather than going through as fast as possible. So if you feel that you are understanding it, then that's great. Good luck with your endeavors, and I hope that this has helped!
The only thing you have to keep in mind when you read these kind of books is that they are teaching you the C++ language and really don't cover programming. This is how a lot of these books get people to buy them. I've met a lot of programmers online that have read that book, but had admitted to having no clue how to do the process of going from idea to finished product/project and had never heard of top-down or bottom-up. I've heard a lot say it is learned with experience, but IMO that is just brute forcing your way through and may either get overwhelmed or give up on an idea. Sadly, I don't know of any sites to recommend off-hand, but a book I've been recommended in the past and one that I've been planning to get is Bjarne Stroustrup's Programming: Principles and Practices Using C++ (new edition comes out next month).
The only thing you have to keep in mind when you read these kind of books is that they are teaching you the C++ language and really don't cover programming
This is so true. Any book that claims to teach you a particular programming language isn't really teaching you how to program. Its teaching you the syntax of that particular programming language along with some convenient examples. Maybe in a lot of cases this distinction doesn't really matter, but when you start working on larger and more complex projects or collaborating with other programmers, you'll start noticing that there is an entire set of terminology and problem solving techniques used which are far more generalized than just a particular language's syntax.
The gang of four's design pattern book is great example of such a book but there are many others. Once you're comfortable with the syntax of your chosen language, I would suggest reading the gang of four's design pattern book. It will really help you with managing complexity, which is an absolutely critical skill if you want to move beyond textbook examples and onto writing non-trivial code.
The gang of four's design pattern book is great example of such a book but there are many others. Once you're comfortable with the syntax of your chosen language, I would suggest reading the gang of four's design pattern book. It will really help you with managing complexity, which is an absolutely critical skill if you want to move beyond textbook examples and onto writing non-trivial code.
A related link, discussing various game programming patterns. Free, online.
