vb.net or c++

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

i am soon enrolling on an evening course at my local college for programming.the college is running two courses,one in vb.net the other in c++.i have little programming skills and would like some advice on which one to enroll on.
i have been told that learning vb.net then learning c++ is a waste of time and i may aswell just start with c++.
i have a lot of time to put into this at home so i was thinking maybe jump in with c++ and practice like hell.

any advice?

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

i always thought Visual Basic was the best to start on but have a hunt around the net and see. Let us know what you find, i am interested myself.

 

i keep getting conflicting info.some say c++ to start others say c++ is impossible withut a grasp of a more basic language.the teachers at college just seem to plug the language they teach.
i think i may just start c++ as it is the language that is used more i suppose.
are you working in IT yet boyce?

 

808 > What is it that you want to do? Systems programming, applications, on windows or cross-platform?

If you're looking to develop on windows only, then i would say vb or C# are good to go for, if you're looking for a more portable language that will enable you to develop on other platforms e.g windows, linux, solaris, bsd, mac os x and others, then C++ would prolly be the better option.

But as always, go for what excites you the most!

 

i want to program games and demos with a view to doing it commercially sometime.windows would be the main os.

 

For that I'd say C++, as in my view VB doesn't have the performance required for such things.

Harry.

 

thats what i have heard but how hard is it to learn.is it harder than vb?

 

Depends where you're coming from, have you done any programming before? and if so what lingos?

I started with ZX Basic back in the 80's, but C++ wasn't too hard for me to get to grips with. I've never done any VB so can't really comment on it.

But i definatley agree with harry, you should go for C++ if you're interested in games programming.

 

VB was always targeted to be 'easy' (for some value of the word easy). C++ is definitely harder, but depends on how much of it you need to master.

M$ traditionaly ignored a lot of C++ weirdness in order to encourage people to use it. It is one of the most complex languages I know *IF* you want to be good at *all* of it.

However, you can do lots of good things with just part of it, and gradually work up to the rest. Don't forget that is is based on 'C' which is really quite a small language.

Harry.

 

If I were you, i'd go for C++ or maybe even just C to start with,
For all the hype that VB is simple, it's not so simple that you should go out of your way to learn it.

Also, VB is a lot slower. One thing though, if you plan on creating
windows applications too, VB would be best as this is a lot simpler
than C++ For that.

Also if you are interested in games programming, you might want to do a bit of research into Direct X Programming, as to create any 'good' game nowadays you'll need it. Direct X also gives you lots of simple graphic libraries and other such stuff I never really got the hang of lol

 

Here's my advice for games programming:

vb.net

Don't bother with this unless you are a complete noob at programming. This language is not used for professional games development so therefore will carry no weight when you say that you've mastered it.

Java

I would strongly recommend that you learn this language. If you intend to develop games for mobile platforms like mobile phone. These use what is called J2ME and a C-like language called 'BREW'.

Nokia also offer a Series 60 SDK that will allow you to create your games with J2ME for free.

C and C++

This is an abosolute must for any games programmer. Expect to have to master these. Why? Because they are the languages of choice across the board for PC and console games development.

About DirectX, I would take the OpenGL route first to avoid confusion with the pointers used for the majority of function calls under DirectX. OpenGL is a lot more noob friendly for graphics.

Great resources to learn about the games industry and games development in general are:

www.igda.org
www.gamedev.net

 

Nice to see you here Math!

 

Hey mate! Just had to put the matter straight. Couldn't resist!

 

Now that I think of it and you seem to know the difference.

What's the difference between C, C#, C++ ?


Also, as per the original question, I thought VB.Net was a complementary application/language that used all aspects of programming including C#?


Incidentally, I'm a Noob, but I did a year of Java at University and got thoughly lost. Hello World.

 

C is a now very old language, but none the worse for that. It is also a simple language, but many would say deceptively simple. It is very close to the hardware, so can run blazingly fast in the right hands.

C++ started out life as "C with classes". You will be familiar with classes from Java. C++ unfortunately started to aquire a *huge* amount of bells and whistles, to the point that it was a very difficult language to master completely.

You could take the view that core Java is C++ simplified. It certainly has lots of similarities.

In the early days of using C++ Microsoft's implementation was kept deliberately simple so that devs had *some* chance of getting apps out of the door.

As C++ got more and more complex, M$ decided that they needed a simpler language without the nasty pitfalls (null pointers and the like) that bedevilled C++. They could have used many other languages, but they were going through a phase, which they do regularly, of falling out with everybody else, so settled on a simplified C++ without pointers, and called it C#.

This language was *supposed* to be a standard, but a combination of irritation from elsewhere and rapidly moving goalposts means that it is only sensibly available on Windows.

Now M$ seem to be of the opinion that devs can't be bothered with C# so are downplaying it.


Warning: The above is my *own* view, and may not have much contact with other people's reality.

Harry.

 

I agree, wherever you came from that was an excellent post
Mathematix

 

Thanks Hbroomhall, very clear.




I am using a library book to read up on Visual Basic 6, from what I've read so far tells me that VB is primarily used for constructing Online Forms for business applications and various other 'tools' for some websites where data from people needs to be recorded or displayed in a particular way.

Hope I've read it right.

 

That is actualy a fair assesment. The lack of performance of VB largely doesn't matter in such situations.

Harry.

 

Cheers. Been using C/C++ for ten years this year.

C - A derivative of BCPL that was used for mathematical and computer science research during the 1960s and early 70s. Its widespead adoption came to the fore with the introduction of K&R C which is fair to say was the first standardisation.

Its primary purpose was to be a high-level language that was designed to be more flexible for low-level systems implementation. This is still evident with the use of inline assembly and pointer arithmentic to mimic the functionality of the addressing modes that are often implemented by hand in asembly language.

C is widely accepted and is arguably the most common procedural language out there.

C++ - Although many consider this language to be "C with object orientation implementations", it actually goes much deeper.

1. C++ does introduce object oriented programming to what was commonly known as C.

2. C++ has much stricter type checking with the introduction of reinterpret_cast, dynamic_cast, static_cast and const_cast as opposed to the old style casting of the form

float aFloat = (float) 1.1;

3. The Standard Template Library (STL) utilises C++ OO structure in its implementation and use.

4. There are a variety of other changes that have been implemented in the C++ stadards to enforce safer coding practises.

C# - Not much to say about this really, beyond that fact that Microsoft and associates tried to point out the 'weaknesses ' with C and C++ and offer more managed techniques for handling them.

Not to my knowledge.

Get back to Java. It'll be worth your while as a developer.

 

Cheers mate!