Question How long does it take for you to learn C++ just for addon developing?

[PhantomCruiser]

Are the C++ books for dummies worth it? There were two I was looking at, one was $40, the other $30.
Several of the "Dummies" books I've seen were written for dummies but tend to keep people at the dummy level. In other words, not very helpful.

 

[orb]

Are the C++ books for dummies worth it?

Books for learning C++ might have been good in nineties, when there was no Internet as is known today. Today, it's much better to learn it from on-line (or off-line but retrieved from Internet) resources, and there is any level available (dummies, too), which you can choose progressively.



EDIT: Books can be still good if you want to know something more about assembly, or have a processor instruction reference, when you write programs on paper.

 

[Keatah]

On your own and just for Orbiter add-on developing?

It really depends on your ability and how well you apply yourself.

 

[Mandella]

I think it can be done in a week...
It took me weeks of :rant:ing to get the compiler set up...

Seriously.

Self teaching C++ has been a surprisingly pleasant experience so far. The more you learn of the language, the more it makes sense. But Microsoft's Visual Studio? It reminds me of an old farm mule that'll do what you want until you aren't looking then it kicks you in the butt. :lol:

C++ A Beginner's Guide, by Herbert Schildt, was the best newbie reference for me. At one time it was distributed freely (and legally) online, and to the best of my knowledge still is.

 

[jedidia]

But Microsoft's Visual Studio? It reminds me of an old farm mule that'll do what you want until you aren't looking then it kicks you in the butt.

No kidding. I think I had less trouble learning the syntax than I had with getting rid of gazillion linking errors every time I worked with third party code. It still gets to me if I have to set up a project with too many dependencies...

 

[icedown]

I already knew c++ but had only used libraries, not runtime linking. Most of my experience was on linux anyways. I've been using java the past couple years and when I went back to c++ to try to code for this I found out just how lazy java made me. Its still gonna take me a while to get back up to speed on it.

 

[Jarod]

You can also check if what you need is available with Lua. Addon development is possible with it. I made a launch autopilot for a rocket as a testbed with Lua in just an hour without knowing the language.

 

[Sherrif of Nottingham]

lol I went into 2012 not knowing how to program, 1 month later and I'm writing iPhone Apps, Objective-C, but until I'm actually able to make money off of writing apps for a development company I probably won't have the time to turn around and try other languages. The person I will be working for has been the best resource, being able to ask questions (no matter how stupid the questions end up being) about anything has been a godsend.

But he taught people before, and said that I picked it up rather quickly. Now moving into Orbiter Development I have no Idea, but I do know that programming languages are a step beyond spoken languages. It has the complexities to describe ANYTHING. It is unlimited what you can make in a programming language, Of course you have to work within the limits of the program you're making for.

I like to think of programming this way (odd I know) if you can describe it in your spoken language well enough for others to understand what you are talking about, it would be a simple task to create what you describe using the programming language.

 

[Face]

I like to think of programming this way (odd I know) if you can describe it in your spoken language well enough for others to understand what you are talking about, it would be a simple task to create what you describe using the programming language.

"Make a program that takes another program and its input as input and determines if it terminates or not." Now go code that... :lol:

No, seriously: you can describe more to a human using natural language than you can describe to a computer using a programming language. Maybe not as efficient, but certainly a super-set.

Communication is not only the language used, but the participants, too. Fortunately, IMHO, human/human communication is still one step beyond human/machine or machine/machine communication.

regards,
Face

 

[n72.75]

Learning C++ doesn't make you an addon developer. Learning English doesn't make you a poet.

 

[fausto]

learning time depends from level of your add-on - after one and an half year i understand that there are a lot of things to learn

 

[N_Molson]

I'd say that it takes some time to get familiar with some abstract concepts like pointers, classes, methods, structures etc... if you're new to this. I'd say it's the "metalinguistic" part of C++, in my opinion the most dry, as you don't are rewarded by immediate results in the sim.

Else, when you got the compiler set up (see the famous Computerex video tutorial), making some mods to the ShuttlePB sample is rather straightforward. And from there, you can try new stuff, more advanced functions etc... I'd say it's the "syntaxic" part of C++. The good news is that Martins provides us a "dictionnary" (the API reference), and that you can find exemples in existing samples.

And, beyond that, C++ is such a vast thing that you probably can't learn it in an exhaustive way. So you always learn new "vocabulary". And in the same time, you learn to organize it better (metalinguistic part)...

So as said above, you never stop to learn. :yes:

 

[Izack]

Learning C++ doesn't make you an addon developer. Learning English doesn't make you a poet.

No, but for a lot of us who are trying to learn it, the creativity is there and we just desperately need a way to express it. IMHO that's a noble enough motivation to learn to write the syntax and think the paradigms (and most importantly battle the compiler. :shifty I for one wouldn't be able to without a preliminary goal like "I'm going to create my very own spaceship with this" in mind.