Linux Format forums

[cioannou]

As the subjects states , I am a Powerbuilder programmer, and made a few tries to learn C++ , here is the story.

I get a few books, read'em and get terribly bored. Ok guys, I learned the basic stuff, now what? Where is a real world book? C++ is not as easy as VB or Powerbuilder to understand and use by simply reading one or two books with basic examples.

It seems that there is no book to get you into real world programming, e.g. client-server development using QT or GTK or any other widget set. Everything I looked at is good either for an academic approach or for a nice theory on the language which you can't even put to practice because the examples are so generic that don't really help in the real world and last is the category of books that are really written for professionals that already know a lot of stuff and need specific information to master their techniques.

Well, the task is simple. Let's say that we need a simple but nice looking application to store customers, send a few e-mails to these customers, print some nice looking reports and export some data to a spreadsheet or pdf. Simple as that!

Could anyone suggest a book or a series of books that could get us windows programmers to linux real world application programming with C++?
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First Generation Legacy
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Country Sedan

[super_tux]

I'm not sure it's the best way forward, but I found it helpful to find and tinker with someone elses code to see how it works.
This worked well for me after finishing C++ at college and wantintg to move onto something a little more advanced.
I visited http://planet-source-code.com to look for examples of applications I was interested in and 'played' about with some of the examples in there until I had become familiar with the way it worked.
I feel that experimenting with code is often the best way to understand the language from multiples angles, reading is great in theory but is useless without the practice.

There are plenty of tutorials which you might flick through untill you find something that *works* for you. Try googling for some.

As for naming a book title, I can't think of one..

If I think of anything else I'll post here.

[alloydog]

Have you looked at Dr Dobb's Journal, or more precisely, the C++ section?

[GMorgan]

The problem with C/C++ is you really need to learn the basics before ploughing on with higher level stuff. Learn the standard libraries then move into the areas of more advanced libraries like GTK etc. I'm not familiar with Powerbuilder but I think the best way to learn C++ is to understand the basic structures (your functions, objects and control structures) and then go on from there. As long as you know how control is passed along your program then you shouldn't have any trouble.