Introduction

Free Compilers: http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/cpp.shtml

Terminology

¢ ANSI

     American National Standards Institute

¢ ISO

     International Standards Organization

¢ Computer Components

     Input unit

     Output unit

     Memory unit

     Central Processing unit: Registers, Controller, Arithmetic Logic Unit

¢ Operating system

     Software that controls the alocation and usage of hardware resources such as memory, CPU

     time, disk spae, and peripheral devices. It is the foundation software on which applications

     depend.

     Examples: Unix, Linux, XP, Mac OS

¢ Languages

     Machine

        Only language a machine directly understands - consists of 0s and 1s

     Assembly

        Consists of English-like abbreviations (push, pop, etc.)

     High-Level

        Visual Basic, C++, Java, etc

        High-Level Language Ú Compiler Ú Operating System Ú Machine

¢ Compiler

     Converts high-level language into the only thing the machine understands - machine

     language, 0s and 1s

¢  .NET

     Microsoft has a corporate strategy for integrating the Internet into computer applications. This

     strategy is implemented in Microsoft's .NET platform.

    The .NET platform's three primary programming languages are Visual Basic.NET (Version 8,

    based on earlier versions of VB and used in my VB course), Visual C++.NET (Version 8, based

    on C++ and used in my C++ course), and C# (a new language developed by Microsoft).

¢ C++ programs generally consist of three parts:

     A programming environment (IDE or integrated development environment)

     The language

     The C++ Standard Library

¢ A preprocessor program executes automatically before the compiler's translation phase

     begins. The C++ preprocessor obeys commands called preprocessor directives (start with #).

¢ C++ programmers can create their own user-defined types called classes. Each class contains

     data (referred to as data members) and the set of functions (referred to as member functions)

     that manipulate that data.

¢ An instance of a class is called an object. Objects have the property of information hiding. This

     means that objects normaly are not allowed to know how other objects are implemented.