[Qt-interest] How is the best way to learn C++ and Qt?

[Jeffrey Brendecke]

I have not found any single book or resource that I could recommend.

The best I have used so far were assigned text books from the university where 
I took some classes.

Examples:
Data Abstraction and Problem Solving with C++: Walls and Mirrors, 2nd Ed., 
Carrano, Helman, Veroff (1998), Addison-Wesley.

Data Structores & Algorithm Analysis in C++, 2nd Ed., Weiss (1999), 
Addison-Wesley.

Outside of that is the often mentioned book by Stroustrup, which is a good 
place to look for some sane advice when confronted with often dogmatic 
differences of opinion of what is the right and wrong way of doing something.

I have also found these helpful:

C++ FAQs, 2nd Ed., Cline, Lomov, Girou (1999) Addison-Wesley

and to the Exception C++ Series by Herb Sutter et. al.

In many ways C++ seems more like Python than Java. It allows mixed procedural 
and object oriented ways of approaching problems in addition to generic 
programming approaches without forcing you to use any one or the other.

It takes a long time to learn and longer to master, but gives you incredible 
flexibility at the cost of having to know what you are doing. Using IDEs to 
learn it will tend, in my opinion, to encourage bad programming and design 
habits. It may be helpful to try to forget much of what was learned using 
garbage-collected languages or rapid design tools, as these also in my 
experience translate to difficulty in properly designing in C++. Learning C 
can help with some of the basic syntax and concepts, but being a good C 
programmer does not necessarily mean being a good C++ programmer. It is in 
many ways a rich world unto itself.


--------------------
Date: Tuesday 02 February 2010 01:11
From: Jason H <scorp1us at yahoo.com>
To: Ross Driedger <ross at earz.ca>, qt-interest at trolltech.com
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] How is the best way to learn C++ and Qt?
--------------------

> I'd recommend the book "Design Patterns In Qt"
>
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>
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> ________________________________
> From: Ross Driedger <ross at earz.ca>
> To: qt-interest at trolltech.com
> Sent: Mon, February 1, 2010 6:31:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] How is the best way to learn C++ and Qt?
>
>
>
> On 1-Feb-10, at 5:15 PM, qt-interest-request at trolltech.com wrote:
>
> Message: 4
>
> >Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 20:08:56 -0200
> >From: Lucas Pereira Caixeta <lpcnew at gmail.com>
> >Subject: [Qt-interest] How is the best way to learn C++ and Qt?
> >To: qt-interest at trolltech.com
> >Message-ID:
> ><4735de921002011408k2af79bf4v2fd7377ec5a62171 at mail.gmail.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> >Hey guys,
> >
> >Well, i?m working now with c++ and qt, in my past i worked with ASP =/...
> >So, i want (please) to know your opinion about the best way to learn c++
> > and qt.
>
> Hi Lucas,
>
> Good question.  Sometimes we have someone showing up asking a Qt question
> and it is obvious from their code that they are still struggling with the
> C++.  If you don't have a reasonable handle on the language, Qt will be
> next to impossible.
>
> My advice, and others may differ, is to learn C++ to a point were you are
> comfortable with designing and implementing an efficient class hierarchy,
> proper object management, have a good handle on the basics of multiple
> inheritance, including when not to use it, const correctness, templates and
> virtual functions.  As someone who has taught C and C++ to programmers of
> other languages, one hurdle that comes up consistently is knowing if the
> object you are dealing with is an object, pointer or reference, and the
> implications of each.
>
> In my case, I would add stl, though Qt comes with some homegrown generic
> programming constructs -- but I'm an unrepentant stl-head who prefers to
> use it over Qt's constructs.  Which ever route you take, using collection
> classes is the way to go.
>
> When it comes to the graphical stuff, you will be dealing with pointers for
> the most part.  One of the things that took me a bit to get used to is what
> heap allocated things to leave to the framework to delete and what I had to
> do myself.  Qt's system is not 'Garbage Collection' in the text book sense,
> but it does help in not having to write a ton of delete's.
>
> >Everybody starts with c++ and qt here some day, so i?ll get goood opinion
>
> I don't know if my opinion is 'good', but it is mine. :)
>
>
> Ross Driedger
> ross_at_earz.ca