White - Mastering C++: A Step by Step Guide for the Beginner and Advanced User, Including 26 Quizzes and 120+ Questions

If you want to control your computer, you have to be able to speak to it and, to do this, you need a programming language. All this language is, is a piece of text, much like a book, that has its own definitive structure. That structure is stricter than a standard language and it has a much smaller, more defined vocabulary. C++ is one of the most popular of these languages.

Whats The Difference Between C and C++?

C programing language was originally developed for the Unix operating system. It a powerful language but it doesnt have any of the more useful or modern constructs. C++ is newer and is based on the C language, adding in modern features which all make it far easier to use than C, allowing for more sophisticated programs to be written.

With C++, memory management is easier. There are more features for object-oriented programming and for generic programming youll see what this means later. For now, all you need to know is that C++ gives programmers an easier ride than then C does.

Because C++ is a superset of the C language, you dont need to have prior knowledge or experience of C; if you do then you will just find C++ that much easier to grasp. And, contrary to what many people will tell you, no, you do not need to know math to become a programmer!

For the most part, computer programming is all about logical reasoning and design, not about complex arithmetic, calculus and algebra. Where math and programming overlap is in the area of precision thinking and logical reasoning; the only time you would need to have skills in math is if you intend to go into advanced 3D graphics engine processing statistical analysis or some other numerical programming that is specialized.

Terminology

Throughout this guide, you will see a lot of new terms, all of which will become clear to you. To start off with, Ill give you two of the more basic concepts that you really need to know before you start:

• Programming the act of writing a set of instructions that a computer can read, understand, and execute. These instructions are known as source code and that is what you will be writing if you follow this guide.
  • this is the result of your programming a file that can be executed. This means that your computer can run it. You already see these if you have a Windows system, they are known as EXE files. In order to create an executable file, you must have a compiler. This is a program that converts your source code into executable code. If you dont have one of these, all you can do with your source code is look at it.

So, thats what we do next. Set up our environment so that we can write source code and execute it.