If you have enough time in your hands , that is , 6 months , start with c.There's this book by Dennic Ritchie called " The C programming language."That is the Bible of C.But if you are willing to learn c++ to satisfy your hunger for knowledge of what actually happens behind the screen , then go get yourself this book - " Teach yourself c++ in 21 days" by Jesse Liberty.You can use that book if you are not in a csc course in university.After finishing that book in 2 months ( maximum ) you should get another book on "OOP or Object Oriented Programming/OOP in c++."

After you've learnt the ins and outs you won't really need any other book.There's this kick-ars* website www.planetsourcecode.com


It helps a lot to see other styles of coding and code yourself even when you are a newbie.If you are in a university computer science/programming/is course , I suggest that you should teach yourself the easy way- visual basic 6.



The microsoft visual studio 6 developing environment is huge.It'll take up like 900mb of disk space even if you uncheck foxpro and dbase things.For the first few months , you'll be opening new win32 console applications , then open a source file ( a c/c++ source file ) and save 'em in a folder.

Each time , you need to create a new project or workspace if you want to type a new style of code.The java virtual machine that comes wid the enterprise edition will probably detect other java applets in ur system and replace 'em..shouldn't coz a problem.

I actually think C++ books are easier to understand than C books. I think you should start off with C++. It's more mainstream and more people know it. For the most part, they're pretty much the same until you get to do more advanced stuff. I suggest you pick up that book by Jesse Liberty, as I think it's the best book for beginners.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/06...CMZZZZZZZ_.jpg http://images.amazon.com/images/P/06...CMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

I agree with Inscissor, few people these days believe it's worthwhile learning C as a path to learning C++ if what you want to do is C++. (Of course, C is worth learning in its own right if you want to do C).

If you search a little longer, there are plenty of tutorials on the internet. They vary in quality but between then you'll find most topics covered. A good beginners book will be of great benefit. Accelerated C++ by Koenig and Moo is one of the popular recommendations I've seen in forums and newsgroups.

In addition, Visual Studio comes with extensive online help; be sure to spend some time familiarising yourself with what's there at the click of a button.

Finally VC++ 6.0 is a little dated now, and not as conforming to the C++ standard as some of the more recent compilers. Be aware that at times you'll have to use work-arounds for some of the particular VC++ 6.0 quirks (typical of similar compilers of the same age). If you want a free IDE/compiler to run alongside VC++ I would suggest you download Dev-C++ from:

http://www.bloodshed.net/

Thanks for you help. Though to be honest i'm not so conserned with the code as i am with the environment. it dose not seam to be as easy to get going as VB, and i cant find much help on the web. the code i can figure out' ish. but setting up a the environment to start creating an interface is giving me some hassle. anyway if any of you have any links to some help using MS visual studio 6.0 c++ environment let me know. otherwise thanks for the advice on the code side of thing i'll have a look at some of the book you have suggested.

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