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[Mage]

Visual C++ also has some things specific to it that the C++ standards don't have though, like __fastcall.
Visual Studio is the IDE and isn't language specific.

If you want to get technical about it.

[Xcool]

does anyone know any good directX programing with C++ Books or websites

[Wishi]

There are a couple of tutorial sites out there. There's some tutorials on our site (for Xbox) but general ones can be found on andypike.com and riaz.de. There's probably some more out there you can Google for.

There aren't many good books that I know that aim to teach you Direct3D from the beginning. However, most of the Premier Press series come with a 3/400 page intro which goes over some of it so it's a case of looking around and seeing what looks good.

[joseph_hac]

QUOTE (Xcool @ Dec 13 2003, 10:04 PM)

does anyone know any good directX programing with C++ Books or websites

You can't go from no experience right into DirectX programming. You 're going to be overwhelmed. Programming has an extremely high learning curve.  I have taken programming all throughout highschool, and am now half way through my second year of college, and I still have not tackled DirectX. You have to be realistic. Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to write programs or ports for the XBOX anytime soon. That's just the way it is.  If you want to program, you need to start from the ground up. You need to learn the basics of coding structure: sequential, iteration, decicisons. Then you need to know the fundamentals of object-oreinted programming: classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation. Once you know the basics, you can code in pretty much any language.

In you want to be a programmer, my best advice is to go to a good school.

[strangeduck]

I first took a class in C++ in 9th grade (I'm a soph in college now), but everyone in my class was retarded so we went really slow and I hardly learned anything about object orientation. I learned C *really* well working as a coder on a MUD. I kinda went into it having decent coding skills but never really having applied them before (I picked up a book on C called C Primer Plus by Stephen Prata - great book for C), and by figuring stuff out in the MUD server code as I went, I learned a lot about good programming practices and everything you could ever want to know about pointers (very important and difficult concept). That was in 11th/12th grade...so I guess at that point I had a great knowledge of C and didn't know shit about object-oriented programming. Then I started college.

My school teaches their programming classes in Java, so in my first quarter of taking comp sci classes I started picking up the concepts of object-oriented programming, which I'd always thought were worthless when I was coding in C but turned out to be way cool and helpful once I started understanding them. I picked up a book on C# last summer to see what all the hype was - if you're interested in programming web pages then C# + ASP.NET rocks, but if you want to make games then I don't think it's about to become a standard anytime soon. Anyway, now that I knew Java and C#, I decided to go back and pick up all the C++ stuff that my retarded 9th grade class never got around to learning, and it was pretty easy because C++ is the same object-oriented concepts that Java and C# have, just using a different syntax. However, I don't recommend learning C++ after Java or C#, because getting used to a pointer-less language and then trying to learn C++ will fuck you up hardcore. I still make stupid mistakes with pointers in C++ programs because Java made me stupid by not making me worry about them. Anyway, I still suck at making Xbox programs, but I'm working on picking up DirectX and the Intro to 3D Graphics Programming class I'm taking at school starting in three weeks will probably really help that. So, all this is my experience, and what I recommend based on that is:

Learn C++, get a solid understanding of a.) pointers and b.) object-oriented concepts like classes, inheritance, polymorphism, etc. With that knowledge, picking up Java or C# would be hella easy - then, as long as you have solid math knowledge, you can start taking on 3D graphics programming, which is the step I'm currently on.

[SHiZNO]

you dont need to learn C before C++...C has gone in its own direction since C++ was created/standardized... its probably best to jump into C++ and use the OO I/O classes than mix all the old C functions with C++ (you can do it but its probably not the best practice) eg using new/delete over malloc, the *printf functions over the std::cin||cout functions