Microsoft C++ Programming: Hands-On Introduction (4 day)

Course Overview

C++ is a well-established, mainstream language used across a broad range of programs. This course provides a solid foundation in C++ for programmers without assuming experience with the C language. You acquire knowledge of key object-oriented programming concepts and gain valuable hands-on experience developing C++ programs.

Microsoft are one of the world's popular software companies, this C++ course will help keep your skills up to date.

Related Courses

• Microsoft C++: Programming introduction for non-C Programmers (5 day)
• Microsoft C++: Introduction for C Programmers (4 day)
• Microsoft C++: Advanced Development Skills (5 day)
• Microsoft C++: Component Object Model (COM) Programming with C++

Audience

This course is for those interested in programming with C++, including application and systems programmers, software engineers and their managers.

Professional programming experience is assumed. C programming experience is not required.

Skills Gained

Learn to:

• Create, compile and run C++ programs
• Write functions, decisions, loops and exceptions
• Declare, use and distinguish variables, constants, arrays, pointers and references
• Define and implement classes to produce reliable, reusable code
• Use STL classes and instantiate templates
• Implement object-oriented designs using encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism

Course Outline

Introduction and Overview

• Relating C, C++, Java and C#
• The in-class development environment
• Other development environments

C++ Programming Building Blocks

The main function and standard I/O

• Main's specification and body
• Displaying values and strings to cout
• Reading values from cin
• Formatting with stream manipulators

Objects, constants and references

• Declaring and initialising variables
• Integer and floating point data types
• Performing arithmetic calculations and displaying results
• Passing messages to objects
• Using references for efficiency and constants for safety

Defining and calling functions

• Passing arguments to functions and returning values from functions
• Call-by-value vs. call-by-reference vs. call-by-address
• Scope, duration and initial values of local temporary and parameter variables

Decisions, loops and logic

• Making decisions with if/else
• boolvs. intlogical values
• if/elsestatement "chains"
• Performing loops with while and for
• Equality, relational and logical operators
• Increment and decrement operators

Increment and decrement operators

Arrays, pointers and strings

• Declaring and using arrays and pointers
• Storing strings in character arrays
• Accessing array elements via pointers
• Pointers vs. references
• Standard string class and functions

Defining C++ Classes and Objects

Encapsulating higher-level data types

• Public member functions and private data members
• Protected class members
• Constructors and destructors
• Member initialisation syntax
• Self-reference: the this pointer
• The class member operator (::)

Declaring, accessing and modifying objects

• Manipulating arrays of objects, pointers to objects and references to objects
• Invoking member functions
• const member functions
• Passing objects by value and by reference

Overloading and templates

• Simplifying class interfaces
• Function signatures
• Overloading assignment (=) and insertion ()
• friend functions and classes
• Explicit copy construction
• Avoiding default assignment and default copy construction
• Using STL templates to define families of related classes

Separating interfaces and implementations

• How separation supports code reuse
• Building header files and code files

Extending Classes Via Inheritance

Deriving new classes from existing classes

• Construction and destruction of derived objects
• Is-a-kind-of relationships
• Reusability via incremental extensions
• Base classes and derived classes

Utilising polymorphic functions

• Overriding virtual base class member functions in derived classes
• Runtime lookup of functions through base class pointers and references

Managing dynamic data

• Allocating and deallocating memory with new and delete
• Handling errors with try and catch
• Avoiding memory leaks

Standards and Extensions

• Standard vs. platform-specific implementations
• Applicability to Windows and UNIX/Linux
• Managed C++, C++/CLI and other extensions