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Hi everyone,
I was searching the net for some programming resources and I stumbled upon this site. I'm looking to eventually get a posistion in the game developing business, but firstly I need to gain experience in programming. I'm 19, and going to college next fall, and I was wondering if maybe you guys could help me out. What is the ideal degree to have for a job in the programming field? I'm very computer literate, but have no knowledge of programming. The most well known language to me, or atleast most heard of, is C++. Would it be wise to perhaps buy Visual C++ and start working with it on my own? It would seem advantageous to me, if I know a bit of computer programming even before I went to college for my degree. Lastly, are there different programs to write C++? Or is it just Microsoft that makes the product?
Thanks,
Brandon
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What is the ideal degree to have for a job in the programming field?
Computer Science, I guess. At least in my country, electrical engineers do quite a bit of programming work, too. If you're good at programming, I don't think the degree you take will make any significative difference when it comes to finding a job in the game industry (but definitely having a degree is better than not having it).
Would it be wise to perhaps buy Visual C++ and start working with it on my own?
Very wise.
Lastly, are there different programs to write C++?
Well, for Windows platform, VC++ is almost the only actual choice. There are other products, but they don't receive as much attention as VC++ does, by far.
Joaquín M López Muñoz
Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo
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The standard in the gaming industry is still C++ at this point. There are several options to programming out there as far as languages and I have heard of some games programming done in every language that exists. I would recommend Computer Science, although Electrical Engineers are good as well. However I think in Electrical Engineering you may learn more fun stuff (I am an electrical Engineer) you lose some of the theory of programming that may give you an edge over other candiates if all you want to do is software. However you may want to look at a software engineer program if one is available as that would merge more of the two disciplines.
In my honest opinion for what you hope to accomplish studying C++ would be your best choice. Getting used to the Microsoft Visual C++ will get you closet to most gaming environments that are out there, but once again it is not the only flavor of c++ on the market. Linux has gcc. There is borland c++. Each of these will allow you to learn the language and get you in to programming and give you experience.
Another approach for entering the gaming industry and one that I have been exploring is to download the tools for modifying a current game. These modifications often have a script language which is very similiar to C/C++. These are good tools to let you see what is ahead of you, however they may be a little confusing to start with. Don't worry too much about that, but they are good demos.
Lastly, coding or programming to me is a skill that translate well accross boundaries more readily than most. I have worked in Visual C++ for many years now, but after I was laid off and started my new job, I was forced to support Visual Basic code for a while. The reason I say this is that even studying visual basic will help you learn to code and understand object oriented programming. The syntax however will be different, but if you learn to understand outside the syntax and understand the concepts, any language will work for you.
Brian
If you start a fire for a man, he will be warm for a day. If you start that same man on fire, he will be warm for the rest of his life.
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SanShou wrote:
However I think in Electrical Engineering you may learn more fun stuff (I am an electrical Engineer)
You're saying that doing all those circuits analyses and Fourier transforms are fun! It's *because* of all my analog circuits that I'm in software development! bleh. That was some evil stuff. 
(end rant)
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Since you're interested in game development, search the microsoft website for directX. Get the sdk and documentation. The programming language would be C/C++, but that's not very important. It's something you learn as you experiment with the technology you're interested in, in this case gaming. I hope you're a dedicated geek , computer science is not for career minded people. You have to love it to succeed in it. Most aspects of it can be very fustrating, only a passion can get you to where you want to be. Especially something like game programming.
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What? Computer Science Degrees aren't for the career-minded? And what inspires that comment?
James A Beggs
Microsoft MSN Mobile Component Test Team
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What i meant was, that computer science is not for people whose main motive is a high paying job. It is usually more difficult than such people anticipate.
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Ah!
Thats cool. I loved CS and programming myself. Can be technical, creative, really use your brain, and still make a decent living.
Well, except in the current market. With all the dot.com collapses that Washington had in the last two years, the IT market really suffered. I haven't worked anything but short term contracts averaging 3 months each in the last two years because of it. And that with an average of a month or so between each contract. Ugh. 
James A Beggs
Microsoft MSN Mobile Component Test Team
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Start making mods for games. A lot of mod developers get jobs because of their work.
There are lots of C++ "compilers". A lot of games run on Macs, consoles, etc. and use compilers other than Microsoft. CodeWarrior and gcc are two examples.
Computer Science or an Engineering degree are good for programming. If your highly self motivated you might find CS a bit slow or uninteresting. If that's the case then look into something Engineering related where you can get a good math backgroud. There are also some schools now that offer game development degrees such as DigiPen.
Also have a look at
http://www.flipcode.com[^]
http://www.gamedev.net[^]
http://www.gamasutra.com[^]
Todd Smith
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Hi,
I've heard a lot of those features in Windows XP called side-by-side execution of 'assemblies' and thought it was only available for .NET programs.
But then I consider a description on MSDN showing that even unmanaged DLL's (normal libs and COM libs) could be reside version independent on Windows XP using a XML manifest description.
Now I'm looking for deeper instructions how to use that functionality, but I couldn't find any samples or tutorials on MSDN (only the Platform SDK docs).
Hope anyone can help me by stating a good book, link to a tutorial or even some sample code.
Best regards
Andi
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Search .config in MSDN. Any app can be associated to a .config file with versioned assemblies.
MS quote (http://www.microsoft.com/ddk) : As of September 30, 2002, the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 DDK, the Microsoft Windows 98 DDK, and the Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 DDK will no longer be available for purchase or download on this site.
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I am a very junior level professional programmer, and I'm having a problem - and I feel rather foolish about it.
Generally, I've really preferred C++, but I haven't worked with it in some time, and until recently, I used Borland C++ Builder 3.0, which is somewhat old now.
I'm now using Visual Studio 7.0 .NET, and I'm having a couple of problems.
The first is that I'm having a devil of a time with editing a list box. Did this all the time in VB, but VC++ doesn't seem to make it as easy. I've opened up the properties, but it isn't giving me any options for adding data - and the data property in the property list is greyed out.
The other is, how does one add a button or other control to the primary window itself for VC++? With Borland C++ Builder, I could just paint it on. And I can paint them on for dialogue boxes in the resource area. However, I can't find accurate information in the help files. While I am still looking for them, I thought I'd see if anyone out there could help me out with this.
(I should probably get my hands on the books; this is a tool at my workstation I'm using, sans instructions. I can program in C++ just fine, but I'll be darned if I can find some of these GUI creation controls in VS .NET).
One last thing: I had found a so-called tutorial in the MFC/C++ section for editing a list box - but some of the screen shots the person had displayed dialogue that I cant seem to bring up. It looked more like my VB 5.0 interface, and such items are not coming up in my VS in the C++ environ....
Thanks!
James A Beggs
Microsoft MSN Mobile Component Test Team
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The best I can say is: Get a book about programming with VC++.
It's way different from what you have tried before, because you have only been using RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools. In VC++ you have to do it all by code...
Take a look at this one.[^]
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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Thanks. I work at Microsoft here in Redmond, Wa, as a short term contractor, and they have a company library. So, I went down and got a few books.
Annoying. For my home use, I may have to check out Borland's most recent C++ Builder. One of the versions of it does include .NET material as well.
What is your favorite C++ compilers?
James A Beggs
Microsoft MSN Mobile Component Test Team
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James A Beggs wrote:
What is your favorite C++ compilers?
VC, the one and only 
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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Haha!
Well, I "grew up" on Borland C++, then picked up C++ Builder 3.0. I liked it, a lot. I haven't used it in awhile, and I am debating on what to get, Borland, VC, or something else.
James A Beggs
Microsoft MSN Mobile Component Test Team
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I have been looking at solving some "inconsistent" problems with my program which seemed to be memory related. Strings displayed in dialog boxes overwritten when there was no command to change them. In order to check that I did a build with Boundschecker. Although I am not sure how I fixed my own problems  , after a few full rebuilds and initializing data in the pointer class I was using, my code seemed to solidfy. However bounds checker gave me a list of memory leaks within external dlls. (i.e.
Dynamic memory overrun
Copying 65535 bytes to a block allocated in DNSAPI.DLL!0000121A
Starting offset: 0, destination size: 2 bytes
HANDLE: 0x0016B5A8
allocating thread ID: 0x6DC, current thread ID: 0x6DC
Location of Error
DNSAPI.DLL!0000141D (unknown) (unknown)
DNSAPI.DLL!000015BA (unknown) (unknown)
DNSAPI.DLL!00002AAF (unknown) (unknown)
DNSAPI.DLL!000029E4 (unknown) (unknown)
DNSAPI.DLL!0000298F (unknown) (unknown)
Point of Allocation
DNSAPI.DLL!0000121A (unknown) (unknown)
DNSAPI.DLL!00002AAF (unknown) (unknown)
DNSAPI.DLL!000029E4 (unknown) (unknown)
DNSAPI.DLL!0000298F (unknown) (unknown)
or
Memory leak
1152 bytes allocated by MSVCRT.DLL!0000101F in MSVCRT.DLL!00003517, HANDLE: 0x01F31F20
Location of Error
MSVCRT.DLL!00003517 (unknown) (unknown)
MSVCRT.DLL!00001431 (unknown) (unknown)
Is there a way to debug this.. I assume it is something that I am doing in the calling of the API and MFC code. Okay I am one that doesn't want to just blame Microsoft and release something with errors that I can resolve.
Unfortunatly I am not a debug guru and haven't been able to study under any master, so any help could be cool. Otherwise when I get time, I guess I could comment out calls and find out what is causing these leaks. Trust me I learned alot debugging my AddRef/ Release extremly simple garbage collection for some classes. I learned I should probably have used a better smart pointer class  instead of my simple technique....
Anyway thanks for any tips...
The path to mastery is full of stupid moments and errors, but the error of the stupid is to assume that they are masters.
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- you cannot debug MSVCRT
- BoundsChecker is not always accurate. Far from that, type casting makes it easily confused and say wrong things about it. Moreover, you are not telling us whether BoundsChecker reports it is a object leak, interface leak, gdi leak.... If that's an object leak, then MSDEV is likely to show it as well (as a proof whether BoundsChecker is wrong or not).
- Best advice would be :
-- do not use DNSAPI if you can
-- try to use it in another similar program
MS quote (http://www.microsoft.com/ddk) : As of September 30, 2002, the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 DDK, the Microsoft Windows 98 DDK, and the Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 DDK will no longer be available for purchase or download on this site.
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Wish I could not use DNSAPI, but one of the requirements that I have already is that I can resolve an Internet Address by name as well as by numbers, so I have to use it.
I sort of realized that boundschecker is not going to be completely accurate. Many people have posted examples of the way I use gethostbyname, so I will check out one of their programs to see if it is the same problem. Otherwise it must be the way I am using it.
As far as the leak goes... It is labeled as a memory leak. VC++ doesn't record the leak, which is where I normally start. I usually use Boundschecker if I have had a problem that might be memory related. I have learned to ignore resource leaks and gdi leaks unless they are in my code.
Thanks for the help though. I appreciate the feedback...
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Hi all
First off, I know nothin of C++ (well i can read a bit). Now the problem is: I have a static object library (file.lib) and its header (file.h). Now I want to compile this into a static(???) DLL and export the 4 functions available in the header. Is this possible?
I have tried something myself by creating a file.c file and including file.h at the top. I also made a def file with the exports (correct AFAIK) and adding file.lib to additional dependacies in the linker properties. This is why I like C# so much, VC++ has toooo many settings!
Can someone please help? I'm clueless!
Cheers
Give them a chance! Do it for the kittens, dear God, the kittens!
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leppie,
I see you are creating a .def file, are you trying to convert this into a .dll that can be called from VB?
Nick Parker
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it. - Unknown
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Nick Parker wrote:
I see you are creating a .def file, are you trying to convert this into a .dll that can be called from VB?
C# really, but yes!
Give them a chance! Do it for the kittens, dear God, the kittens!
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leppie wrote:
First off, I know nothin of C++ (well i can read a bit). Now the problem is: I have a static object library (file.lib) and its header (file.h). Now I want to compile this into a static(???) DLL and export the 4 functions available in the header. Is this possible?
Yes.
Let the wizard generate a DLL project for you. I prefer to use (MS specific) __declspec keywords instead of a DEF file.
Pavel
Sonork 100.15206
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Pavel Klocek wrote:
Let the wizard generate a DLL project for you. I prefer to use (MS specific) __declspec keywords instead of a DEF file.
OK I rephrase, I know nothing of Visual C++
What wizard must I use? what is this precomopiled header, do I need it? I dont really want answers to these.  I just too much for me, but the compiler complains to what ever I do, so I just remove them.
Give them a chance! Do it for the kittens, dear God, the kittens!
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leppie wrote:
What wizard must I use?
AppWizard "Win32 Dynamic-link library" in VC6, should be in VC7 too. It generates a dummy DLL project with some optional example code.
leppie wrote:
what is this precomopiled header, do I need it?
No, you don't need them, if you turn of use of precompiled header files in your project settings (C/C++ section). The purpose of precompiled headers is to speed up the compiling - selected header files are compiled only once per project, otherwise they are compiled with every cpp file where included again. The stdafx.h file marks a point, where the precompiled headers ends in your cpp file, following includes are compiled as usually.
Pavel
Sonork 100.15206
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