C++: A General Purpose

Language and Library

Kate Gregory | Gregory Consulting
James McNellis | Senior Engineer, Visual C++

Meet Kate Gregory | @gregcons

Consultant (mentor), author, developer
All about community
MVP, RD, user groups, conferences
StackOverflow
Twitter, blog, Facebook

Over 35 years of industry experience

Using C++ since before Microsoft had a C++
compiler

Meet James McNellis | @JamesMcNellis

Senior Software Development Engineer at Microsoft
Currently a member of the Visual C++ Libraries team

One of the top C++ contributors on StackOverflow

Using C++ since Microsoft released Visual C++ 6.0
Usually has absolutely no idea what he is doing

Course Topics
C++: A General Purpose Language and
Library
01 | Getting Started

05 | Pointers and RAII Resource

Acquisition is Initialization

02 | Fundamentals

06 | The C++ Standard Library, or STL

03 | The C++ Object Model

07 | Next Steps

04 | References and Inheritance

Setting Expectations

Target Audience

Has done some development in any other programming

language
Familiar with concepts like looping, conditional expressions
No need for any C++ background or any C-related
language

Suggested Prerequisites/Supporting Material

Book: C++ Primer, 5th Ed., by Lippman, Lajoie, and Moo

Software and Tools

Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows
Desktop
Free download

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Master subtitle
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01 | {Getting Started}
Kate Gregory | Gregory Consulting
James McNellis | Senior Engineer, Visual C++

Module Overview
Development Environment
How to write, build, and run code
Quick History of C++
Variables and Types

Lesson 1 Development Environment

Development Environment

Development Environment
Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop
Its free and its all you need to follow along

Not using Windows?

C++ works on other platforms too
http://isocpp.org/get-started has links to compilers

Our sample code is available

LINK TBA

DEMO
Hello, World!

Lesson 2: How to Write, Build and Run

Code

How code is built

Structure of a C++ program

Debugging

The Compilation Process

Structure of a C++ program

#include <iostream>
int main()
{

Use a library

Special function name

that the OS calls to run
your program

std::cout << "Hello, World!" << std::endl;

return 0;
}

std::cout represents console output

<< means send the next thing to it

DEMO
Building

Debugging
Normally a console application
Starts
Executes the code in main()
Might print to the console (or read from the keyboard)
Terminates (quits)

Under a debugger, you can pause execution

Inspect values
Watch execution proceed
Slower, but vital to understanding

DEMO
Debugging

Lesson 3: Quick History of C++

Born in 1979 as C with Classes
Retains backward compatibility with C

Named C++ in 1983

Ratified as ISO standard in 1998
Continues to change under stewardship of a
standards committee

Lesson 1: Types
C++ is strongly typed
Fundamental types
Casting (changing type)

DEMO
Types

Fundamental Types
Types you use a lot:
int, unsigned int
double
bool

Types you may see

char, unsigned char
long, unsigned long
short, unsigned short
float

http://

Casting
Instead of writing code that relies on the compiler to
convert one type to another, you can ask for it
explicitly
i = static_cast<int>(3.2);
Makes a good signpost for others who read your
code
Takes away compiler warnings
Always try to build warning free

DEMO
Casting

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