Can I learn rudimentary programming from a book?

[NJ5]

radha said:

NJ5 said:

Rpruett said:
I would start with C++. C is too cryptic in many ways and can be a hassle. Java is to abstracted from the actual machine IMO.

C++ will give you an easy introduction and understanding into what you're doing. As you grow with C++, you will be able to handle Java or most of what you want with relative ease.

That doesn't make sense. As other posters have said, C is essentially a subset of C++.  If you know C++ you know C too.

 

It is wrong to say C is a subset of C++, it si a preceding language not a subset, compailers compile c for backwards compatibility reasons not because they are the same, c is not object oriented , structures are suppoerted and there are ways to implement anything c++ has in c, but c++ has it as an standard, c is faster and more compacted.

Is not true that if you know C++ you know C too, because you need some work arounds to make C work like C++ that are not convetional.

 

I said essentially a subset. There are very few things which work in C but not C++, and they're all small details which can be converted in one second. Those differences are not relevant for this thread, they're slight nitpicks as you can read here:

http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#C-is-subset

Thus, C++ is as much a superset of ANSI C as ANSI C is a superset of K&R C and much as ISO C++ is a superset of C++ as it existed in 1985. Well written C tends to be legal C++ also.

You mentioned structures. C's structures are also supported in C++, in fact a class is just a souped-up structure which allows to use the public/private/protected keywords.

You mentioned speed. C++ is not slower than C with equal code, only if you use a slower C++ feature (which you aren't forced to).