Hello Everyone,

I'm trying to learn C++ in depth. I should say I've programmed in Java for a few years now (throughout college, 5+ years hehe), so I'm not new to programming and programming concepts.

However, I keep stumbling into problems and riddles in C++. For example, can anyone explain what are those special all-uppercase variable types, like WORD, WSAData, SOCKET, DSWORD, etc, where they come from, how are they defined (macros??).... Intuitively they make sense, but when time comes for me to use them, why should I use type SOCKET instead of int?

If anyone can shed some light on this, I will be forever thankful.

-ik