inheritance, polymorphism, and other features

[invinate]

Hi, i've been reading about c++ advanced concepts such as polymorphism, (multiple) inheritance, templates, operator overloading and others. It all seems more or less clear to me but i know i would never really understand all these language features until i've used them. the problem is that i don't know where to use all this knowledge. the exercises from books seem to be dull and useless, it would be good if you could suggest something interesting to code that would be usefull and where i can practice OO programming at the same time. Or maybe you could point me to other peoples code or projects where i can see OOP in action. though understanding other peoples code seems to be harder for me than writing my own...so not too complicated :cheesy:

[hollystyles]

One of the best things you can do is read other peoples code, I try to do it every day. Don't stick to one language read as many and have a go at as many as possible. Examples in books may seem boring but do them anyway , then expand on them yourself. One of the most important skills for a programmer is his/her creativity if you need other people to give you ideas that might be a warning bell. Try browsing sites like rentacoder.com there are hundreds of people who need software solutions so you can get a good idea of what the world considers to be useful programs. Oh and read read read read...

Encapsulation / Inheritance / Polymorphism are the three pillars of Object Oriented Programming and are not unique to C++

Did I mention reading ?

[invinate]

thanks hollystyles, interesting thoughts...reading is definately a good suggestion. any particular place i can look where there are _good_ examples of OOP ?
thanks for the rentacoder link.

[hollystyles]

I recommended some books in this thread:
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread49196.html

You gotta have at least one book, there's stuff all over the net just search OOP or Object Oriented in Google or Yahoo. But you need to know how to sort wheat from the chaff (people talking out their a***) So start with a reliable source and go from there. For you as you've chosen C++ I recommend Jesse Liberty's "teach Yourself C++ in 24 hours" it concentrates on the OO capabilities of C++ and has chapters talking about OO itself as a paradigm.

sign up to http://safari.informit.com and you can get at 1000's of technical books for about $9 a month (about £5)

[invinate]

thanks hollystyles !