For a couple of months I was intensely involved in family history, and haven’t been writing much on the blog. I have set that aside for a while, and work on something else. In about 1997-1999, I was studying Computer Science at UVSC (now UVU) in Orem. I was having various personal struggles and failing in school, but I escaped with an Associates’ degree and some knowledge of Computer Science. I have recently decided to scrape up the rust off my computer programming skills and work on developing the computer version of my knowledge base.
Some time ago, I had taught myself C Programming by working through a textbook on the subject. In the Computer Science field, things had moved to C++. Now, I understand that the standard had moved to C#, but I’m not quite ready to jump into that. I prefer to continue with the older style, and then gradually move into newer techniques.
So, I’m reviewing my old CS basic C++ text ( C++: How to Program, Deitel & Deitel, 2nd edition. ISBN 01-12-528910-6. There are newer editions and probably better textbooks by now, but this still work. I’m using Visual Studio 2015 (Community version) for a compiler. This works, although I’m probably not using most of its functionality. I’m so far doing old-style console applications, not yet anything Windows oriented, although I would like to work into that.
I’m not working through the book in a serial fashion, although I am copying and running the sample programs and illustrations, working through the exercises, and building an application of my own to attempt to integrate the pieces.
I’m nearly through the exercises in Chapter 1: Introduction, although I have a few more to go. In Chapter 2, Control structures, I’m most of the way through and have reviewed the break and continue statements in loops. For chapter 3, Function, I’ve gone through recursion with the fibonacci series. For chapter 4, I’ve reviewed passing arrays to functions. For chapter 5, I’ve reviewed the pointer operators. For chapter 6, structure Definitions. The idea here is that if a topic in the later chapters is too advanced, I will hold up and do work in earlier chapters until I can grasp it.
From time to time I may be commenting on my trial application.