Introduction

This is a tutorial for writing programs in the C++ language. It's aimed towards people who have experience writing programs in other languages, such as Java, Python or Lisp.

C++ is a strongly-typed language that supports object-oriented programming. It was created by Bjarne Stroustrup in order to provide the C language with objects, and it has the reputation of allowing the programmer to write object-oriented programs that are fast (not, you may note, the reputation of allowing the programmer to write object-oriented programs quickly).

Traditionally (if "traditionally" can be used for something so recently created), C++ was taught either as the first object-oriented language students or programmers learned, or as a step up from C. More and more, however, people are learning programming by using Java or other languages, and this leaves a gap to the programmer who knows how to program well, but, for whatever reason, wants to learn or use C++. This "real, quick" guide to C++ is not a reference guide to C++, but a quick introduction to C++ using realistic programs. It's divided into four sections: first, we demonstrate C++ by writing a simple (but realistic) program to count character frequencies in a text; second, we describe how to define classes and objects in C++ and do a little software development; third, we discuss memory management and a inheritance; and fourth, we provide a series of pointers to other resources for learning C++.