New Prospective Programmer has Questions...

[AxessTerminated]

C++ beeotch! all the way. i started with it, and i will end with it (or a predecessor such as C#.)

also, .net is little more than some extra libraries and garbage like that...not needed, but can be nice...such as winsocks2.

i can remember dabbling in BASIC waaay back when...same with HTML, but those just got me interested. C++ is easy to pick up on for beginners, and is probably the most widely documented language available.

http://www.cplusplus.com/
http://www.cppreference.com/
http://www.cprogramming.com/

For a compiler on win32 systems:
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

Also, the SAM'S books are very very nice. sometimes they go out of order, but you should never rely on only one source anyways. the "C++ For Dummies" is also not bad. "C++ From The Ground Up" is the one I used most.


A_T

P.S. - as an added tidbit, seeing as how Google allows boolean operators in it's search engine (such as the + symbol for AND)...make sure the phrase "C++" IS IN QUOTES for the best results, then you can add any other info afterwards.
So, once again, I say "C++ beeotch!".

[soma56]

Awesom. Thanks for the encouraagment.

[Juridian]

HTML is a formatting language not a programming language. C# is not a predecessor of C++, C++ is a superset of C that came after C, C# is a C syntax language for developing with the .net framework....

.Net is more than just extra libraries, it is a development platform. You can do managed C++, VB.net, J#.net, C#, and a dozen other languages using the .net libraries or you can just code straight up IL. It has a good base of objects ready to use (the framework class library), the ability to work with older COM based .dll's, and allows you to make web services, event driven web applications, windows services, and standard applications extremely quickly.

C++ is fine as a beginner language, the learning curve is a bit higher to do anything really useful. I'd recommend picking up the stroustrup book 'c++ programming language'.

[|3lack|ce]

Being old school I'll tell you that if you take a good computer logic course you can't go wrong - learning the basics of how all programs work is the key - with that key you can program any language, with just a few syntax changes. Learn flowcharting and pseudocoding first.