I’m planning on properly learning C++, with future plans for an FLOSS project. However I’m wondering whether my computer is good enough for a development machine.
No need to worry; I don’t plan to use vscode (eats memory for breakfast) as my IDE and I’m not on Windows, nor am I afraid of the CLI. I would love some creature comforts in my editing environment, though.
Here’s my machine:
AMD Ryzen 4300U, 8GB RAM, 470GB SSD (note: 33GB used by me and OS).
If you think it is possible to use my computer for this, what quality learning resource would you recommend to a poor guy like me? (“quality” here means that it explains stuff well and actually explains all the language features and the STL decently).
That computer is more than adequate to learn C++ . … I have a similar 8Gb machine that compiles Gentoo regularly.
It needs to run Linux or BSD of course.
All you really need is the compiler, the build tools, and your favourite text editor.
I would not recommend an IDE for learning… do everything by hand… you will learn more that way.
I use C and R ( not C++) so I have difficulty recommending a resource.
There is a book on C++ by Stroustrupp. I found it a hard read.
The most important thing in learning to program in any language is practice writing code. You need a project that is important to you that you can keep hammering away at without losing motivation.
I have the same sort of ambitions about learning Julia. I will never get there until I find a suitable large project.
Yes no problem when learning a new thing not always important to have super high spec as speed performance not vital. Also good to see if it works on older boxes as more users are likely to be using similar spec
What I’m more concerned about is my ability to work on my idea, once I’ve finished the course. I know the little programs from the tutorial don’t require much, but what if FLTK (a GUI library) and YAML (a markup language for storing configuration data) start looking around the corner? Will my system struggle, or are these libraries small enough it doesn’t really matter (looking to use pre-compiled binaries).
It will not matter. I compiled gentoo on a similar machine and I regularly update it.
I use R in that Gentoo… R does everything in ram… 8Gb is enough.
More than 8Gb is for bloated megapackages. Real programmers avoid that.
I used to do most of what you want to do on a 486 with Freebsd… that was quite workable.
Most of my learning to program was done years ago on mainframes where you were only able to run one job per day. That was slow… it made me focus on getting the code right in the first place, rather than debugging it later. Debugging took ages at one try per day.
“The Annotated C++Reference Manual”
Margaret A Ellis and Bjarne Stroustrup
ISBN 0-201-51459-1