Reed - C++: The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Learn C++ Programming Step-by-Step

C++ Programming

The Ultimate Beginners Guide to learn C++ Programming Step-by-Step

Mark Reed

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Table of Contents

Introduction

This book is fit for beginners and for coders who are interested in getting into backend programming. Although C++ is sometimes portrayed as a specter of days past, the language is still with us and it continues to be behind some of the biggest technologies we use todaynot mentioning its big imprint in the gaming world. Its power and versatility continue to make it one of the most important languages of our time. It is not going anywhere and learning it will expand your horizons.

C++ is often utilized as a backend language for big data because of its little processing overhead. Companies like Spotify, Adobe, YouTube, and Amazon power their backend with C++, and you will soon see why.

C++ is also behind powerful gaming engines. Gaming engines allow programmers to build a game without coding everything from scratch and to effectively render content. The Unity Game Engine and the Unreal Engine are examples of gaming engines that run on C++.

C++ is a beautiful, efficient language because of the favorable power/hardware ratio: it uses little hardware for the amount of power it gives us. This is why those who learn it love it.

In this book we will cover the following topics:

Programming terminology and principles in programming

Setting up a C++ environment

Getting Started: Syntax, Data Types, and Variables

Power of C++: Operations, Loops, Switches, and Decision Making

Creating custom functions in C++

You will also find a useful glossary at the end so that you can use the book as a reference once you get cracking.

Chapter 1:
Setting up a C++ Development Environment

At its most basic, programming is writing a list of instructions in code that the machine can understand. The code resides in executables files. These files come with file extensions that tell a compiler what language is in the file. These extensions are the suffixes you often see at the end of the file, like .js. .cpp or .hpp.

To write code and save it in an executable file you need the following things:

1. A text editor : this will allow you to write and edit the code.
2. A language compiler : This program takes the code you have written and translates it into machine language that your computer can understand and follow.

All programming languages work like this except HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - these programs are interpreted and executed by the browser ( Introduction, n.d.). This means browser languages like JavaScript are software-based, while C++ is compiled and then run directly on your machine, not in a software environment.

This means C++ is an assembly language. Assembly languages are low-level programming languages that need a compiler so they can run on a machine (Lithmee, 2018). In this context, the word low-level does not carry a bad connotation; it is descriptive, meaning that the language is closer to the machine or just a step away from it.

As you can probably guess, C++ is a general-purpose language that can run almost anywhere. This means it can be assembled and compiled in several different ways. This will largely depend on your operating system and the creation utilities you are using.

Our C++ exercises will be compiled on an online IDE. IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment and it is used to edit and compile code. I bet that description sounds familiar. Yes, an IDE is an example of a text editor, but unlike a plain text editor, it has extra features that are important to the programming process. An IDE can do things like compile code, debug code, highlight code, warn you of syntax errors, and more.

In this book, we will use a Geeks for Geeks web-based IDE, but you should learn to set up a local IDE. For the majority of your programming career, that is where you will be working. Plus, you can customize the IDE to fit your needs and spruce up your code.

IDE environments that are focused on programming always have to have a text editor and a compiler within them. Non-IDE environments separate compilers and plain text editors. The text editor serves as a programming interface in non-IDE setups; this simply means the text editor will be the place you tinker with the code.

When looking for a text editor, you need one with syntax highlighting and indenting as all programming languages follow their syntax. This is because you want to be able to read your code easily and you want collaborators to be able to do so, too. These text editors help by improving readability. This is especially important because coding is no longer and has never been a solitary task. There is no one-man genius like in the movies.

Github and Pastebin are code aggregators that have syntax highlighting add-ons enabled. Github will allow you to host your entire project on their site, while Pastebin only allows code snippets. On these platforms, you can save code in a variety of languages.

They are very useful to programmers because they allow programmers to share code, collaborate, test, and so forth. Learning how to deploy a project to Github is one of the most important things in programming because it has become so standardized. So, maintaining a Github profile has also become important, as it holds all the projects you are working on, have worked on, and your activity (Peshev, 2017). To a potential employer or collaborator, this information is invaluable.