Related
Note: I am new to programming and extremely new to c++.I have seen scouring google for a long time and only things i can come up with are external headers and very complicated code..
I want to do this at school, and there we are provided with Turbo C++. We can't bring any external headers in there, gotta work with whatever i've got.
I want to create a GUI. I want to create something really good for our annual project and i want to create a GUI.
I would like to make as detailed a GUI as possible, but would be satisfied if i can create as much as several text options and clicking on em triggers respective functions (I am sorry if thats not how GUIs work, i never worked with one).
Again help is highly appreciated, i understand most discussions on Stack Overflow are much more complicated than this, i appreciate you taking the time to read and (hopefully) answer a layman question.
I'll suggest a non-technical solution because this is actually largely not a technical problem. Much of your problem is that you have to use Turbo C++. Unfortunately, a number of poorer countries have, for some reason, stuck with extremely outdates software in education. I know because I'm originally from one of the "Turbo countries", and I know that the main technical university there still uses Turbo for undergrad courses.
This is bad. Large projects in school are there to teach you to work on software. A regular programming course should teach you to think like a programmer, and it doesn't matter what language you use. But term projects are supposed to be more practical. The problem is, with Turbo C++, not only will you fail to learn enough, you will learn things that are bad. You'd be writing a 16-bit program that takes effort to even run on modern hardware, while not being able to use the C++ language properly. The compiler is older than the first ISO C++ standard!
If you want to make an impressive project that will stand out in your studies, especially if you later want to continue at a foreign university, I urge you to talk to your professor, explain the situation, and ask if you can use something else for the project. A modern compiler with some framework like Qt. If you can reach an agreement to use something else, it will benefit you.
Otherwise, if you have no choice, get Turbo Vision. There are versions of BC++ packaged with it, or you can find it elsewhere, Turbo Vision is a fairly comprehensive interface framework for the dinosaur era.
First off, the toolchain and operating system you are using is outdated and incapable. And the language support Turbo C++ offers can hardly be called C++ at all; the code you will write will not be C++ code. At best, it will be C with classes code.
All that aside, there was a fairly-capable Text-based User Interface (TUI) library available with Turbo C++ (as well as Borland's Pascal-based toolchains,) called Turbo Vision. You might be able to use that. It generates UIs quite similar to the Turbo C++ IDE itself.
But IIRC, it was not trivial to use, so I advise you to find a book or reference or comprehensive tutorial of some kind. However, since your environment precludes anything that is not available already with TC, I see no option for you other than using Turbo Vision or writing your own, which doesn't sound like something you can do or want to do.
I recently started C++. I am using PHP right now and decided to take a look at C++. Web programming had me working with a couple of languages, with a couple of people. I wanted to do programming where I only had to bother with one language and create small utility apps (mostly not web-based). I wanted a compiled, strongly-type language without memorizing a tome of classes. Basically I wanted to learn C++ for the following:
mobile programming (I don't ever want to go touching Java, and I don't have a Mac for Objective C or IPhone SDK)
small desktop apps like DTRs, POSs
creating small desktop-based games
creating small Air-like applications that can access the web for additional content
I heard that C++ is not beginner-friendly and is mostly used for huge projects with lots of calculations and fine details (like 3D games). Is it practical or even possible for me to use C++ for the above cases? (Sorry, I haven't delved on C++ that much yet, so aside from "huge, monolithic project", I don't know any other uses for it)
You can certainly use C++ in all the areas you mention, though whether it is best of breed for any of them is open to debate. C++ is very large and complex language, and requires a fair bit of effort to get up to speed on. If I were you, I would pick one of the areas you mention that you are most interested in, and then find out which language(s) are best suited for that area and learn that.
If you are set on learning C++ you will need to read at least one book on it - you cannot learn it from internet resources alone. See this question The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List for a book list.
On the droid you can use other languages aside from Java - check out their ASE (Active Scripting Environment). C++ / C should really only be used when you have no other choice - i.e. speed critical code, operating systems etc. It's very easy to make a mistake that's difficult to diagnose and there are lots of task where it'll take way longer than it should to write and odds are others have already done so and done it way better - reinventing the wheel is bad. If it interests you though by all means learn and eventually you may master it. It's an excellent skill to have.
It's also not a completely object oriented language however, it's a hybrid one that supports most object oriented features, but some such as inheritance and polymorphism are a bit awkward to deal with in C++ - for example you have to define methods as virtual in base classes in order to be allowed to redefine them in subclasses - sort of like predicting the future - will this method every be desired to be redefined by an inheritor? Really what happens in that case is you make the base class method virtual later on to enable it to be redefinable - that is if you happen to have access to the source code to do just that - if not then oh well. For an example of this confusing stuff in C++ and other gotchas: Pitfalls
Look at other languages such as Ruby or Python - in particular Stackless Python where a combination of it and C++ (used where necessary) was used to create EVE Online as well as the functional languages such Erlang and Haskell.
For 2, 3 and 4, I recommend C# over C++, for the reasons I wrote here.
About 1, you can do iPhone development with .NET but I've never tried it and I don't know how viable it is.
Edit
To answer your actual question: yes, it's totally practical to write small and large desktop apps in C++. Especially if you use quality tools like Visual Studio and Qt. It's just that I think it'd waste a lot of your time for no reason, unless you intend to go into professional game development eventually.
I went to C++ from PHP like you, but I was more interested in 3D games and such. Now I have moved on to C# and find it much more enjoyable than C++.
As for your specific areas of interest however, C++ is certainly an option but C# may be better.
Mobile programming with C++ is probably not a good idea. I know it's possible with NDKs and such but for a beginner it's probably not so good. For iPhone development, other than the official SDK, the next best option is the (commercial) MonoTouch framework from Novell. However, you may still need a mac to deploy (I don't know). In terms of Android, if you don't want to touch Java (don't blame you) I believe a C# framework (similar to MonoTouch) is in development and other languages may be available. Other platforms? No idea.
Small desktop apps is also very possible with C++. Assuming you're running Windows, you can use the Win32 API (pain) or the C++/CLI API (better). You could also use a different GUI framework like Qt, wxWidgets or GTK+ which are all also supported on other platforms. Again coming back to C#, GUI development using GTK# in MonoDevelop is so much fun. Having used WinForms in Visual C# Express back in my Windows days, I can say that I now enjoy the process whereas I didn't before.
Games are my main area of interest and the reason I originally picked up C++. Seeing as you've said small and desktop-based, using C++ for performance reasons is way overkill IMO. You could make a decent, fun, playable game in Python using pygame without the pain of using a language like C++. In C# (yes, I'm trying to sell it to you) you could create awesome games using the XNA framework from Microsoft or other frameworks like (my personal favorite) OpenTK.
Rich internet applications. C++ is probably not the right tool to use here. It's certainly possible but seeing as C++ has no standard networking library, you would have to figure some of this stuff out yourself. C# may not be the right tool either but it makes it a little easier. There are other options as well (like Python) but it's not something I know much about.
Despite what I've said about it, I still think C++ is a good language to learn. It teaches you about lower-level things you never think about in PHP land. If you want to learn it, the book that really helped me was "C++: A beginners guide" by Herbert Schildt and also "Programming" by Bjarne Stroustrup.
Yes, your use cases can all be done with C++, more or less (YMMV on mobile devices).
To some degree or another, a language like C# will be more rapid to develop in, however.
In my opinion, once you get away from the straight-up form design features and hack for a while in a language & application, language feature comparisons begin to diminish in meaningfulness.
I recommend C++ as a first "heavyweight" language; see here for my most recent discussion on it.
I'm getting a little tired of building web applications. Feels like same thing over and over again. Are there any other cool things you can do. I'm maybe getting to start coding in C++.
Any suggestions for tips in that area? Should I delve into Qt or MFC? Any suggestions?
My latest interest is in Robotics. You can get a microcontroller for about $30 (arduino.cc) - and miscellaneous motors off of E-bay. I also have some cheap rangefinders and a GPS receiver - each of them under $30...
I build web apps as well. I'm not really tired of it, but I spend all my spare time programming in C.
If you're just starting out in C++, I recommend starting with some simple console-based applications first. Get used to the syntax and some fundamentals like strong typing, pointers, and understanding the difference between pointers and references. (Depending on your experience as a developer, you may already know all or most of the theory behind these concepts.)
If you're comfortable with these things, building GUI applications is easier (although still far from trivial.) I'd recommend going with a toolkit like Qt rather than MFC, which is largely deprecated in favor of dot NET, if I'm not mistaken.
Edit: also, consider trying out a language like C# instead. C# is newer, a little more cohesive, and lets you use dot NET for building Windows GUI applications.
Write a game. An action game. Like, a shoot-them up for example.
You'll discover the other face of programming. Use whatever you want to make it. C++ is a good choice, but any language will be good. C++ will be harder to "master" than other languages but learning it will make you understand a lot about other languages. But that's your choice : the project domain is more important than the language (that is just the tool).
Just try to make a game, I think it will really be different and you'll discover a lot of interesting things. I recommand a shoot them up because it's visual, make you learn basic graphic rendering, basic collision management and is a good base for a potentially interesting game (if you add a feature that makes it stand appart) that will keep your motivations for learning.
Look into mobile application development like on Android or iphone. C/C++ will come in handy.
C++ is great and all, but writing GUIs in MFC is just stupidly painfully compared to any other reasonable framework out there, like .NET (VB, C#, C++/CLI, pick your language) or Cocoa/Obj-C on the Mac OS X / iPhone OS. Qt is probably better than MFC.
Buy "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie and work through it.
Ideally, you also have access to an OSX/Linux system and can work on that. (C and Unix go hand in hand).
If you're used to working in relatively high-level languages such as C# or PHP, going back to something like C++ where you need to do your own memory allocation and other low-level stuff will probably seem cumbersome. Personally, I was happier making the switch in the other direction, and having much more done for me.
But if you do want a challenge, C++ could be a good option. Or, go straight to embedded. Robotics is a very fun topic, try to fit interesting things (that really move!) inside the 2-KB RAM environment of a PIC microcontroller :-)
I would recommend trying to implement something useful in C/C++. Is these a utility in your operating system you don't like? That you think you could improve? Have you always wanted to do X easily and have a good idea? No matter how big it might seem, research it. Learning an OSes API will teach you a lot about C/C++. Add a user interface in the library of your choice to learn even more. Basically, push the envelope a bit - building a calculator is great or a little console app for learning a few things, but building a fully fledged app with a purpose will really teach you things.
Add intelligence to a simple game using a neural network. I've always wanted to add a neural net to Oware to see if it improves its wins.
If your into pain, you could correct flaws on Windows Vista and 7. :-(
I'd recommend moving to Python rather than C++ if you're coming from a web design background. Get good at object-oriented programming, encapsulation, and related things before you go to C++ and have to deal with pointers and cleaning up after yourself.
I'm looking to be able to build GUI applications quickly and painlessly as possible. I'm competent (though not expert, and have no formal training) in C++, but have never used a GUI building toolkit or framework or anything. I am not a professional programmer and am totally inexperienced and ignorant when it comes to building GUI apps. Have spent hours researching trying to figure out what to do; only getting more confused and discouraged though.
Qt and wxWidgets seem like the most popular options for cross-platform apps, though cross-platform isn't necessarily all that important to me; Windows-only is fine if that means the fastest learning curve.
Qt seems cool and the Qt Creator is sweet looking with lots of good demos, except it has its own classes for everything, and I'm not overly keen on learning a bunch of stuff that's only applicable to the Qt platform itself rather than more generally. I suppose I could avoid using the Qt classes except for the GUI stuff where I have to use them, but I have no idea how wise or unwise that would be.
I was thinking Visual Studio would have the smallest learning curve, but when I open a test GUI app, I see a bunch of foreign looking stuff like carats (^) all over the place - I found online that these mean "handles", which I have trouble even understanding the definition or purpose of ("sort of like pointers but not really" is basically how I've read people define them).
I know pretty much nothing about wxWidgets, or how it compares with Qt.
So every option has a big learning curve - and ideally I'd like to know which one minimizes the time you have to spend learning the toolkit/framework itself. Since I'm likely never going to be making money from the programs I create, the time I spend learning a specific toolkit would be pretty costly. I just want to be able to make a functional program using the C++ knowledge I have, but in GUI form. At the moment it seems if I want to make a GUI app, I'd have to spend way more time learning the GUI framework I'd use than writing the functional part of the app itself.
Any input from people wiser and more experienced than me would be appreciated :)
First and foremost, start simple. There's a lot to the subject. If you are finding it hard, don't try and take it in all at once.
Most of the good GUI packages have tutorials. The best advice I can give is that you try each of them, or at least a couple of them. They are the best short introduction you can have to the library you choose and if they are any good they narrow down what you need to absorb at first. That will give you some basis for comparison, because they are each trying to do very similar things (and you will see some of them before you are done), but they have different feels. You will likely find you have a preference for one and that's the one to get serious with. It will also give you a sense of what's hard about GUI programming as separate from the particulars of one package, which, if you have only used one, you won't have seen. Personally I find this sort of knowledge very helpful, because it makes me less intimidated by particulars.
Here's a list of tutorials in one place, though you have likely seen them already:
Qt's tutorial
WxWidgets' tutorial
Gtkmm book. Not quite a tutorial, though there are lots of examples.
.NET tutorials, either for WinForms or for WPF.
Second, it sounds to me that you need to get some in depth understanding of the concepts of GUI programming, not just a particular library. Here there is no substitute for a book. I don't know all of them by a long shot, but the best of the bunch will not just teach you the details of a toolkit, they will teach you general concepts and how to use them. Here are some lists to start with though (and once you have titles, Amazon and Stack Overflow will help to pick one):
List of Qt books
WxWidgets book (PDF version)
There are tons of WPF and WinForms books. I can't make a good recommendation here unfortunately.
Third, take advantage of the design tools (Qt Creator, VS's form building and so on). Don't start by trying to read through all the code they generate: get your own small programs running first. Otherwise it's too hard to know what matters for a basic program and what doesn't. The details get lost. Once you've got the basics down though, Do use them as references to learn how to do specific effects. If you can get something to work in the design tools, then you can look at particular code they generate to be able to try on your own hand-written programs. They are very useful for intermediate learning.
I'm not overly keen on learning a bunch of stuff that's only applicable to the Qt platform itself rather than more generally.
I second the comment of GRB here: Don't worry about this. You are going to need to learn a lot specific to the toolkit no matter which toolkit you use. But you will also learn a lot that's general to GUI programming with any of the decent toolkits, because they are going to have to cover a lot of the same ground. Layouts, events, interaction between widgets/controls, understanding timers -- these will come up in any GUI toolkit you use.
However do be aware that any serious GUI package is an investment of time. You will have a much easier time learning a second package if you decide to pick one up, but every large library has its personality and much of your time will be spent learning its quirks. That is, I think, a given in dealing with any complex subject.
I suppose I could avoid using the Qt classes except for the GUI stuff where I have to use them, but I have no idea how wise or unwise that would be.
You do not need most of the non-GUI classes of Qt to use Qt's GUI properly. There are a handful of exceptions (like QVariant) which you'll need just because the GUI classes use them. I found you can learn those on a case-by-case basis.
Which is the easiest to learn is really going to depend on how you personally learn.
Personally, I've found Qt to be the easiest to learn so far. The GUI classes are rather nice to use, but I've found the non-GUI classes to be excellent, making it easy to avoid a lot of common issues you'd normally get with a more basic API. The documentation is excellent, IMO, as are the books, the examples, etc. It's also being very actively developed, with a few new technologies coming in the near future (like DeclarativeUI).
I've found Visual Studio/Windows API/.Net to be a good bit more complicated to learn. The API documentation on MSDN is rather complicated and not really organized in a manner that I find intuitive.
I've tried learning WxWidgets a few times, but I've never liked the API documentation.
All this is just my personal experience, YMMV of course. I'd say just dabble in all of them and see which one takes you the furthest, it won't hurt to try multiple.
As a person who learned C++ through Qt, I can only say that they work very well together. C++ purists (like I have become) will find lots of things in Qt not to their liking (the moc preprocessor, e.g., and the continued absence of exceptions for error reporting), but looking back, Qt provided a very gentle introduction to C++ for me.
And if you're like me, you throw in a handful of boost libs in each Qt project, because we want to write "real" C++, not the softened thing Qt uses :)
I would suggest wxWidgets. To me, it's pretty intuitive and looks nice.
Code::Blocks was built with it, so check that out to see if you like the graphics.
There are also a slew of bindings for wxWidgets, such as wxPython, wxErlang, and others, so if you decide to switch off of C++, you can take wxWidgets with you.
I also use wxWidgets and use it all the time for Windows-only applications (the only downside is that wxWidgets is notorious for large .exe filesizes, which may or may not be a problem for you). I found it very simple to use from the start, especially when combined with a GUI designer (personally I use wxDev-C++).
I've never used Qt, so I can't speak to its simplicity, but I doubt the difficulty is on a vastly different scale than that of wxWidgets. However, what I can say is that no matter what API you use (wxWidgets, Qt, WinAPI, etc) your code will be "locked into" that particular platform, so don't worry if you feel that learning Qt will lock you into the Qt platform (because the same thing will happen with any of those APIs).
If you're working solely on Windows however, you may want to do a few simple programs with WinAPI first. That way you have a basic understanding of the lowest level of Windows GUI programming before you move onto Qt/wxWidgets. That said, if you're really into cross-platform programming, then don't worry about that and go straight into Qt/wxWidgets.
I can't intelligently comment on the learning curve aspect, but a quick survey of StackOverflow questions shows about twice as many Visual C++ questions as Qt questions. Probably means that there is a larger support group in place for Visual C++. Might make learning it a little easier if there are more folks to help out.
No matter what you pick, I am quite sure it won't be easy and painless.
Having said that, I know that in some schools they use FLTK because they consider it relativelly easy to learn. I have never tried it.
In my everyday work I use WTL which is as close to the system as it gets while still providing some level of abstraction over pure Win32. I am not sure if I would consider it easy to learn, though, especially given the lack of documentation.
I recommend codegear C++ builder (previously known as borland C++ builder) from codegear which comes with a 30 trial. The nicest thing about it is that the GUI provides you with components that you drop onto a form in a WYSIWYG fashion and make functional by adding code to handle the events it fires. It comes with a whole bunch of compontents out of the box and you can add 3rd party components to it too, like the awesome ExpressQuantumGrid from devexpress, or write your own. It's very powerfull if you know what you're doing but intuitive enough that a beginner can write a database CRUD application in about 20 lines of very simple code.
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, for the sake of completeness, have a plug for the Fox toolkit. This is the one I used last time I did any C++ UI work of my own volition. There are also binding for this to Ruby and Python (the latter being many years out of date, though).
In general, the choice of a toolkit for self-directed work comes down to personal preferences for
the layout manager style
the event handler registration style
How native the widget set looks/can be made to look
If cross-platforming is not necessary, try .net + msvs or delphi. easy, all-in-one, no pain.
Qt is the best option for you. It's the easiest to learn, the most elegant and powerful and it is completely free.
Visual C++: This is an IDE, but it comes with its own GUI library called MFC. MFC is an old library with many quirks and it is difficult to learn and use. Many C++ programmers use it on Windows because it comes from MS, it's fast and it's free if you buy Visual C++. Since VC++ is an IDE, you can also use wxWidgets and Qt with it, although in your particular case I would recommend Qt Creator instead.
You seem to have experimented with Managed C++. Don't use that, even MS recommends that you only use Managed C++ as glue between C++ and C#.
wxWidgets: This one was a strong contender up to the day when Qt became free for commercial projects. It was always in the shadow of Qt and it is known that the documentation is not very good and the API is not as easy to learn as Qt's. Cross-platform MFC would be a good way to describe it.
C++ Builder: Borland made too many mistakes with C++ Builder and ended up getting out of the dev tools business altogether. It was a good product and I originally learned Windows GUI programming in one of the first versions, but I won't use it any more. There are better options and it is too expensive.
I'm all for language diversity, but Objective C is insane. So I'm curious: is it possible to code iPhone apps with C++ while using the Cocoa API, etc?
Although Objective-C does indeed appear to be "insane" initially, I encourage you to stick with it. Once you have an "a-ha" moment, suddenly it all starts to make sense. For me it took about 2 weeks of focused Objective-C concentration to really understand the Cocoa frameworks, the language, and how it all fits together. But once I really "got" it, it was very very exciting.
It sounds cliché, but it's true. Stick it out.
Of course, if you're bringing in C++ libraries or existing C++ code, you can use those modules with Objective-C/Objective-C++.
Short answer, yes, sort of. You can use Objective-C++, which you can read about at Apple Developer Connection.
If you know C++ already, learning Objective-C would be pretty simple, if you decided to give that a try. More info on that topic is at the ADC as well.
I use Objective-C to slap the UI together.
But the hard guts of the code is still written in C++.
That is the main purpose of Objective-C the UI interface and handling the events.
And it works great for that purpose.
I still like C++ as the backend for the code though (but that's mainly becuase I like C++) you could quite easily use Objective-C for the backend of the application as well.
First off, saying Objective-C is "insane" is humorous- I have the Bjarne Stroustrup C++ book sitting by my side which clocks in at 1020 pages. Apple's PDF on Objective-C is 141.
If you want to use UIKit it will be very, very difficult for you to do anything in C++. Any serious iPhone app that conforms to Apple's UI will need it's UI portions to be written in Objective-C. Only if you're writing an OpenGL game can you stick almost entirely to C/C++.
Having some experience of this, you can indeed use C++ code for your "core" code, but you have to use objective-C for anything iPhone specific.
Don't try to force Objective-C to act like C++. At first it will seem to you this is possible, but the resulting code really won't work well with Cocoa, and you will get very confused as to what is going on. Take the time to learn properly, without any C++ around, how to build GUIs and iPhone applications, then link in your C++ base.
You have to use Objective C to interface with the Cocoa API, so there is no choice. Of course, you can use as much C++ as you like behind the scenes (Objective C++ makes this easy).
It is an insane language indeed, but it's also... kind of fun to use once you're a bit used to it. :-)
I'm not sure about C++, but you can definitely code iPhone applications in C#, using a product called MonoTouch.
You can see this post for detailed discussion on MonoTouch Vs Obj-C: How to decide between MonoTouch and Objective-C?
I'm in the process of porting a computation-intensive Android app written in Java to iOS6. I'm doing this by porting the non-UI parts from Java to C++, writing the (minimal) UI parts in Obj-C, and wrapping the former in a (small) C interface using the standard C/C++ technique, so that it can be accessed from Obj-C, which is after all a superset of C.
This has been effective so far, and I haven't encountered any gotchas. It seems to be a legitimate approach, since Xcode lets you create C++ classes as well as Obj-C classes, and some of the official sample code does things this way. I haven't had to go outside any officially supported interfaces to do this.
There wouldn't seem to be much to gain from writing my remaining UI code in C++ even if it were possible, in view of the help given to you by the interface builder in Xcode, so my answer would be that you can use C++ for almost all your app, or as much of it as you find appropriate/convenient.
Yes but Thinking that you can program every kind of program in a single language is a flawed idea unless you are writing very simple programs. Objective C is for Cocoa as C# is for .NET, Use the right tool for right job, Trying to make C++ interact to Cocoa via writing bridging code and trying to make C++ code behave according to Cocoa requirements is not a good idea neither expecting C++ performance from Objective C is. You should try to layout design and architecture of app keeping in view existing skills and determine which part should be written in which language then build accordingly.
I'm currently writing an Objective-C++ framework called Objective-X, wich makes PURE C++ iPHONE PROGRAMMING possible. You can do like this:
#import "ObjectiveX.h"
void GUIApplicationMain() {
GUIAlert Alert;
GUILabel Label;
GUIScreen MainScreen;
Alert.set_text(#"Just a lovely alert box!");
Alert.set_title(#"Hello!");
Alert.set_button(#"Okay");
Alert.show();
Label.set_text(#"Ciao!");
Label.set_position(100, 200, 120, 40);
MainScreen.init();
MainScreen.addGUIControl(Label.init());
}
and compile it using GCC's appropriate commandline options. I've already compiled this helloworld app&it w0rkX0rz like a charm. ;-) It'll available soon on GoogleCode. Search for Objective-X or visit http://infotronix.orgfree.com/objectivex approx. a week later!
Updated (but apparently inactive) URL: http://code.google.com/p/objectivex/
It may be a bit offtopic, but anyway. You can program c++ right on iOS devices. Check out CppCode ios app - http://cppcode.info. I believe it helps to learn c and c++ and objective-c later.