Jenius

After finishing the terribly misnamed chapter on “Managing Memory” in C++, I’m not sure if it’s worth my time to stick with it. I’ll definitely finish the book, but I’m not where I would like to be as far as understanding. It doesn’t help that the big example at the end of the chapter had numerous typos. I guess debugging an unfamiliar language is one way of learning it, but since this book is supposed to be a primer on the subject, better editing would be helpful.

If I ever actually want to use this language, I’m going to have to find another source to help explain the finer details of pointers and references. I wrote before that I was hoping to get a better understanding of them, but I don’t think I do. Actually, the problem is mostly with the actual syntax of them, rather than with their usefulness, so some practice would help, too. It doesn’t help that classes are implemented in a crazy way. You should not be able to define your methods outside of the class, much less be required to in many cases for efficiency.

I’m a little more than halfway done with chapter 6 of my C++ book, and already I am wondering how this language is still around and so popular. Its arrays seem about useless as the arrays in DXL. I think I understand the basics of pointers, but I still have no clear idea why I need to use them. Oh, I know that they are useful for keeping a program’s memory in check, but I don’t understand why a supposedly high-level programming language needs that much programmatic garbage collecting. I finally understand why video games are so expensive. Almost all gaming engines are written in C++.

And then we come to strings. Ugh. In order to make sure that the reader can understand other code, which sometimes has some legacy C stuff, there was a brief review of strings in C. Strings in C make the strings in C++ seem like manna from heaven. Well, maybe not manna from heaven, but certainly a decent burger from a mid-priced family restaurant. I wonder if there is any way that I can avoid strings in any C++ program I write. Probably not.

I finished the fifth chapter which was on classes and objects. Much of it was familiar to me from PHP, of course, but some of the syntax is new to me. If I ever get around to programming in C++, it will definitely be a case of knowing how to use the OOP functionality, but having to look up the details of writing it. And I am okay with that; I look up PHP stuff all of the time, even for functions I use consistently.

I started the next chapter, on memory, and I’m just getting to the part on heaps where I finally learn why I would want to use pointers. I’ve known about pointers for years, and even had a decent understanding of what they are for a while, too, but I’ve been completely lost as to why they are necessary. I guess it never occurred to me that a language so full of potential memory leaks would rely on functionality that could create even more in order to avoid them. It seems weird, but you use what you’re given.

The book I’m using to teach myself C++ is C++ Programming for the Absolute Beginner.  I just got done with chapter 4 on functions.

I’m finding this to be much easier than I thought.  I’ve always had a kind of mental block when it came to C, but my years of experience with DXL and PHP have really paid off when it comes to the introductory topics.  I have learned a couple things completely new, so I’m glad I decided to start at the beginning.  Only time will tell if I can keep up with it.