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Re: Request for computer help.
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2005 Sep 8, 13:32 -0700
From: Paul Hirose
Date: 2005 Sep 8, 13:32 -0700
george huxtable wrote: > Exploring around, I've picked up a copy of C++, which I haven't tried; just > reading the manual was enough to convince me that all the guff about > object-oriented programming was not for me. Was that the right decision? I wouldn't dismiss it based on the impressions gained from one book. Perhaps its examples were so far from your interests that you couldn't make a connection. Try a different book. If you still don't see anything worthwhile in object oriented programming, forget about it. A C++ program is not necessarily an object oriented program. The language is essentially a superset of the older non-OO language C. You can write a program as a single monolithic function, use only global variables, and control the flow of execution with labels and gotos. That would be bizarre even for a 1970s C program, but it does show the range of programming paradigms that C++ can support. > the manual > I picked up, "C++ for Dummies", made no mention at all of any trig > functions. The author probably thought that was outside the scope of an introductory book. In C++ there are three floating point types: float, double, and long double. Each type has a full set of the usual transcendental functions. Complex numbers are also available in float, double, and long double. Each of those has its set of transcendentals. Have you considered Fortran? I'm serious. It's been said that most scientists and engineers born before 1960 learned Fortran as their first programming language. With a Fortran compiler you have access to lots of their tools. For example, I have compiled the JPL DE/LE ephemerides into a Windows DLL. It's a black box I can access from C++ (since I know hardly any Fortran). Actually, the compiled Fortran can simply be linked with C++ to make a single standalone executable instead of making a DLL. But since I'd never done a DLL before, I took that route to learn something new.