A computer is a device capable of performing computations and making logical decisions at speeds millions (even billions) of times faster than human beings can. For example, many of today's personal computers can perform a billion additions per second. A person operating a desk calculator could spend an entire lifetime performing calculations and still not complete as many calculations as a powerful personal computer can perform in one second! (Points to ponder: How would you know whether the person added the numbers correctly? How would you know whether the computer added the numbers correctly?) Today's fastest supercomputers can perform trillions of additions per second!
Computers process data under the control of sets of instructions called computer programs. These programs guide the computer through orderly sets of actions specified by people called computer programmers.
A computer consists of various devices referred to as hardware (e.g., the keyboard, screen, mouse, hard disk, memory, DVDs and processing units). The programs that run on a computer are referred to as software. Hardware costs have been declining dramatically in recent years, to the point that personal computers have become a commodity. In this book, you will learn proven methods that are reducing software development costsobject-oriented programming and (in our optional Software Engineering Case Study in Chapters 27, 9 and 13) object-oriented design.
Introduction to Computers, the Internet and World Wide Web
Introduction to C++ Programming
Introduction to Classes and Objects
Control Statements: Part 1
Control Statements: Part 2
Functions and an Introduction to Recursion
Arrays and Vectors
Pointers and Pointer-Based Strings
Classes: A Deeper Look, Part 1
Classes: A Deeper Look, Part 2
Operator Overloading; String and Array Objects
Object-Oriented Programming: Inheritance
Object-Oriented Programming: Polymorphism
Templates
Stream Input/Output
Exception Handling
File Processing
Class string and String Stream Processing
Web Programming
Searching and Sorting
Data Structures
Bits, Characters, C-Strings and structs
Standard Template Library (STL)
Other Topics
Appendix A. Operator Precedence and Associativity Chart
Appendix B. ASCII Character Set
Appendix C. Fundamental Types
Appendix D. Number Systems
Appendix E. C Legacy Code Topics
Appendix F. Preprocessor
Appendix G. ATM Case Study Code
Appendix H. UML 2: Additional Diagram Types
Appendix I. C++ Internet and Web Resources
Appendix J. Introduction to XHTML
Appendix K. XHTML Special Characters
Appendix L. Using the Visual Studio .NET Debugger
Appendix M. Using the GNU C++ Debugger
Bibliography