/cpptutorial

Learn C++ as your first programming language

Primary LanguagePython

Title: On the C++ Programming Language: Readme
Author: Christian Neumüller

About this project

This tutorial aims to teach C++ as a first programming language. Read the introduction for more information.

This tutorial is written using Sphinx and ReStructuredText.

On the C++ Programming Language: Planned Outline

Introduction

  • Meta
    • About this tutorial
      • Audience
      • Goals
    • Why C++
    • The ISO Standard
    • A tiny bit of history
  • Hello World
    • Compiler basics
      • Info
      • How To: Installing MSVC/g++
    • The Hello World program
    • Using the command line compiler
  • Resources [As in: books, links, ect.]

The Basics: Procedural programming

  • Types, Expressions, Variables [hard!]
  • Branching (if/else, switch)
  • Loops (while, do…while, for)
  • Functions [potentially hard!]
    • Pass by reference
  • Arrays with std::vector
  • Defining new types: typedef/using, enum, struct
  • (Raw) Pointers
  • The heap and unique_ptr
  • Characters, Strings, string literals, std::string

The C/C++ “Module-System”

  • Translation Units, Headers, Linkage and the Linker
  • Namespaces
  • Example: Linked lists, stacks, queues
  • A cross-platform build-system: CMake
  • Using a library: SDL [good running example]
    • Note to reader: You can't start here!

Object Orientation

  • OO Principles

  • Struct/incomplete-type based OO

  • Classes and access control (“visibility”)

  • Value semantics: The big three

    • RAII [SDL has many potential usages]

  • Inheritance and virtual functions

  • Interface idiom and a word about multiple inheritance

  • Linked lists, object oriented edition

    • Iterators

  • Interlude: Error handling and exceptions

    • Return values
    • Exceptions
    • signals?

Introduction to Generic programming

  • Template basics
  • Function overloading
  • Linked lists, generic edition & std::list

Solving old myths

  • Operator overloading: Demystifying std::cout
  • While we are at it: More on IO
  • Low Level Heap Management
    • new and delete
    • RAII: Implementing ScopedPointer
  • Move-Semantics and std::unique_ptr
  • Arrays and std::vector
    • … and std::array

Functional Programming

  • Function Pointers, Functors, Lambdas, std::function
  • Higher order functions [Ex.: STL algorithms]
  • Functional programming and OO

Containers & algorithms (“STL”)

  • Concepts
  • Containers
  • Associative containers
  • Algorithms

Missing/further interesting topics

  • Test driven development
  • Template Meta Programming (TMP)
    • Advanced template features
    • Faculty example
    • Tag dispatching
  • Important libraries
    • boost
    • Qt?
  • Network programming
  • Multithreading
  • Scripting: Lua