C++ for Not Yet Techies

Computer Careers: Expand Your Programming Horizons and Your High Tech Jobs Income Potential with the C Language's Object Oriented Cousin

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

C++, together with its older cousin C, is one of the most common and popular computer careers programming languages in use today. Most commercial software is written in either C or C++.

The "++" in its name is actually C programming code for "incrementing," or "adding to" a variable. C++ actually means C incremented, or C with more added to it, pretty much what you can figure out from looking at it. Maybe the extra plus sign threw you.

And while C++ IS C with more added to it, that doesn’t mean it’s just a bigger version of C.

It has one major structural difference which is what accounts for its increasing popularity for computer careers. C++ is an object-oriented program. (OOP)

This "object-oriented" concept is probably more difficult for experienced programmers to understand, because they are in the habit of thinking of programs as a line by line flow of action. In OOP programs such as C++, however, parts of the code can be in sections which are treated as complete "objects."

This allows for a degree of modularity. That is, if you have a computer job writing a C++ program and you come to a section where it needs to perform some task, and that particular task or object has already been written for another program, you can simply stick that "object" into your program and let this object perform the same task for your program too.

This makes C++ programs faster and easier to write and maintain than before.

C++ was developed in the early 80s by a Swedish programmer named Bjarne Stroustrup. The world did need object-oriented programming. It was a stroke of brilliance, because it provides object-oriented programming built onto the already existing, common and popular C. Many programs look like C programs.

If you already know C, learning C++ is much simpler, faster and easier to learn than a completely new language.

If you were a C programmer assigned to learn an object-oriented program by your employer, which would you rather learn – a language that simply built on to what you already knew and therefore requiring minimal study time and therefore allowed for maximal TV time? Or an also excellent but brand new start from scratch language?

It does have some additional commands and operators, and is more restrictive. That is, it puts more limits on what the programmer can do. This is a blow to programming freedom, but also prevents lots of errors.

Almost every C compiler program that you can buy now will also compile C++.

However, the object orientation is a major difference in the two languages. An object can be a data value or a variable or a very highly complex set of code, but it can be treated sort of as a "package" or – you guessed it – an "object."

It can be squeezed, fondled, tossed from hand to hand, kicked etc.

Whatever you as the programmer need. You can even change how operators work, so it does have a lot of advantages for programmers over the traditional languages. The key concept is that objects can be reused. This "recycling" can save you a lot of time and trouble.

The experts disagree about whether it’s better to learn a nonobject-oriented language such as C first, and then learn how to deal with objects. Or whether it’s better to learn an object-oriented language first, before you’ve trained your mind to think in the more old-fashioned programming logic.

Mmm, put that way, the answer seems obvious, doesn’t it?

Of course, the real answer depends on your own desires and ambitions. Since it is as popular as C or more so, since it’s really C plus object-oriented programming. Since the also object-oriented Java is the number one hot new language. Since the entire computer industry is being drawn to the multi-platform network of networks, the Internet . . . there’s a clear need for and trend toward object-oriented programming for computer careers.

Next: Ada

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