Introduction

Overview

This book is about C++, a fact you are undoubtedly already aware of. There are a lot of other C++ books out there. That’s another fact you are probably already aware of. Why this one? What is different? First of all, this book is aimed at the beginner, but does not talk down to the reader. Yes, you may be a beginner at C++ and perhaps even a beginner at programming. But that does not mean you are intellectually challenged, and this book makes no such assumptions. Also this book accepts that as a beginner, code snippets are totally inadequate. You need complete and total code samples. Samples that you can run exactly as they are written. For this reason, this book has over 80 completely working code samples, completely written out in the text, and on the CD-ROM. There are still a few code snippets scattered throughout the text, but only to illustrate key techniques that are then demonstrated in a complete working program.

In this book, we will step through the various parts of C++ programming in a very systematic way. Many of the concepts you will learn are essential programming concepts, simply applied using the C++ language. Along the way the book also strives to teach you ANSI-standard C++. However, occasionally the text does add-in commonly used techniques that are not part of the formal ANSI standard. These items will be noted when they appear. Finally, the book gives you a peek at Visual C++ programming. This is done because Microsoft Windows programming is just so common, it would be a serious omission if the text did not introduce you to this topic. Essentially what this book proposes to do is to teach you the fundamentals of computer programming, via the C++ programming language.

This book endeavors to present C++ in a clear and understandable way without talking down to you. The first few chapters use rather standard, simple, example code. However, as soon as you have gotten