Below there are links to a video that introduces Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.

I post two, one in portuguese and other in english.

Introduction To Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition – In Portuguese

Introduction To Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition – In English

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I found this guide today C++ Beginner Guide. I believe that it’ll be helpful for a lot of people.

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How are you? Fine?! =D

This is a tip for all the students that read this blog:  
To write and mantain C++ code you need a good enviroment. Nowadays I work with .NET Framework, then I use Visual Studio 2008 and 2005. Visual Studio is the best IDE that I used until today. It offers a lot of advantages and helps you to write code. It’s awesome. When you install it, you have the option to install the support for C++.

To use Visual Studio you need a license, but you haven’t, I presume. You don’t worry about it. You don’t need to buy a license to take the advantages of this IDE! It’s awesome, no?!

The Microsoft offer the Visual C++ Express Edition for free for all enthusiasts of technologies, like us.

You only need go to Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition download and install it.

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Yes, I don’t forgot you. =D

In the last post we talked about a “Hello World” example, using C++. Today we’re going to talk about variables and data types.

But, why I need a variable? Why I need to understand what are the data types in C++? 

You need it because when we create a computer program, that really do anything more than write a “Hello World” in the console, we need to interact with the external world to obtain and mantain data to do our work.

Every kind of data can be store in a variable, like a phrase, an image, your instant messenger password, and so on.

We have a lot of data that we store everyday in our computer, like photos and musics. You probabilly know that the computer only understand bits (0 or 1). The computer’s memory are divided in bytes. An byte is an group of 8 bits. Byte is the minimun amount of memory that we can manage in C++.

OK I understand but how I can store an integer, a decimal, texts and so on?

Yes, you can! C++ is a static and ground typed language, it means that we need to specify what a kind of data we want to store in a variable before we use that and this type will not be changed during the life of this variable. To store data in a variable in  C++ language we need to specify the type of our variable and the name. Then we go to use this name to assign and obtain a value.

C++ provides a lot of data types. The table below show us the types avaiables in C++, the description, size in bytes and the range of precision:

Ok! I understand it, but… how do I use it?

Well, it’s very easy! Really! If you want to store the number 100, for example, we’ll create a short variable, like:

short value = 100;

If the value isn’t negative, we can use the unsigned operator. It say to the compiler that this variable never will be negative, and then, it will have more positive precision.

unsigned short value = 100;

Try to create variables, assign data and print it in the screen. This will be the homework today.

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Commonly, when you study a new technology, the first thing that you do is a “Hello World”. It will not be different here. =D

Below there is a “Hello World!” example writen in C++:

Hello World! Example

To execute this code, you need only a compiler and a simple text editor. In my case, I used the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite, but it could be writen it with Eclipse, Gedit or Notepad++, for example, and compiled in some standart C++ compiler, like Borland C++, Dev-C++ or GCC.

In the next posts, we’ll increase our knowledge about this great language.

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