Beginning C++, section 1-3

I chose to do these three sections in one blog post since they don’t really contain much specific C++ teaching. When I get to more specific lectures I’ll make more in depth posts about what I’ve learned from those lectures.

Section 1 – Introduction

This section goes into why you should learn C++ and a little bit about the history of the language.

The simple reasons the teacher gives for why is two; salary and popularity.

At least in the States it seems like C++ developers can earn good money. How it is over here I don’t know, but I see that there are several open positions for people knowing the language.

The course points to several websites that make different indexes about the popularity of different programming languages. The most interesting link might be a ZDNet-article called Which programming languages are most popular (and what does that even mean)? It is sort of a rundown of all of the other pages linked in the course and it has some discussions about which way to go. You’ll see that C++ is ranked as one of the top 6 popular languages used now and it recommends you choose either C++ or Java as your first language to learn.

Section 2 – Installation and Setup

In this section the course just goes through some of the tools you can use to program C++. The teacher has gone for something that is cross-platform and has low requirements and has ended up with CodeLite as the IDE and they are going to use GNU compilers.

Since I’m using Windows I ended up with using MinGW and CodeLite, but the course also goes through setting up systems for Mac OSX and Ubuntu Linux.

It also links to some websites you can use if you quickly want to test some stuff and don’t have access to your IDE in the moment.

Section 3 – Curriculum Overview

As the title of the section explains pretty good, this is just an overview of what the course will be about and also how the course is built up with lectures and challenges.