pperon: do these books that you mention have a lot of code in them? it seems like the biggest problems i run into is the lack of code in books and in classes.

our c++ teacher has not taught really anything this quarter except how to convert all of the crappy programs we wrote in c to c++. my friends and i have decided to learn a lot of the stuff we need on our own. unfortunately, we have probably learned more on our own than what we would have after we take the next quarter for c++...

again i digress.. thanks for the suggestions on these resources...

No, they don't.

Essentially what you get from reading the entire book (let's say, On to Java) is a Movie rating browser applet consolidating the topics covered. This is obviously not why I read it. I think the real strength is that you are introduced to the language in a natural order. Each chapter (or topic) is roughly 3 - 4 pages in length, leaving you more time experimenting with what was covered or enhancing your own code with new, cool stuff. This really mixes well with my own philosophy on coding...

"A language is simply a tool"

My biggest fear is to become "a Java guy" or "a C guy". That sucks as much as taking your car in to get fixed by the "Screwdriver guy". You'll learn the language really well (and see plenty of code) when you're building something that merits the use of the tool. But I digress as well...

For the price I _highly_ recommend them.

Good Luck!!!

-Phil

JStew.. are you at a university? If so.. you probably know that they aren't trying to teach us specific languages but concepts in programming. Eventually it shouldn't matter what language is thrown at us becuase we *should* know the basics of what's in a language.

PLEASE don't flame me because I know there are some really weird languages out there (ie. ML) that are not in anyway similar to anything.

If you're looking for books, hit up Barns & Noble or Borders and start grabbing. Usually they stock popular books and they're pretty cool about reading before you buy.

Good Luck

Well there is a german book out called "Lehrbuch der Softwaretechnik" I think this one teaches pretty well on the programming stuff. There are examples and those were in Java.

Well I think php.net has an IDEAL way of introducing you into PHP coding. I'd like to see something like that for C++ ... so if you have a website, book or anything about it please let me know. It's really of importance to me.