Is STL a neccisity

[Falco Girgis]

lol. Sorry this just makes me laugh. Not anything about u guys. Just that book I have been following "C++ through games programming". It briefly mentions arrays but for everything that could be stored in an array it uses a vector. Think Im definately going to be going through the other book before starting my own projects. From what I can gather from these forums "Beginning C++ through game programming" just teaches bad coding practice.

Wow, sounds like a really shitty book to me.

[hurstshifter]

lol. Sorry this just makes me laugh. Not anything about u guys. Just that book I have been following "C++ through games programming". It briefly mentions arrays but for everything that could be stored in an array it uses a vector. Think Im definately going to be going through the other book before starting my own projects. From what I can gather from these forums "Beginning C++ through game programming" just teaches bad coding practice.

Wow, sounds like a really shitty book to me.

For real. There should AT LEAST be an entire chapter dedicated to arrays.

[GroundUpEngine]

lol. Sorry this just makes me laugh. Not anything about u guys. Just that book I have been following "C++ through games programming". It briefly mentions arrays but for everything that could be stored in an array it uses a vector. Think Im definately going to be going through the other book before starting my own projects. From what I can gather from these forums "Beginning C++ through game programming" just teaches bad coding practice.

Wow, sounds like a really shitty book to me.

For real. There should AT LEAST be an entire chapter dedicated to arrays.

Tru dat.

[MrDeathNote]

lol. Sorry this just makes me laugh. Not anything about u guys. Just that book I have been following "C++ through games programming". It briefly mentions arrays but for everything that could be stored in an array it uses a vector. Think Im definately going to be going through the other book before starting my own projects. From what I can gather from these forums "Beginning C++ through game programming" just teaches bad coding practice.

Lol i did tell you in the first reply that it was the worst programming book i've ever read. It's not a bad coding practice it teaches, its fucking appauling. I'd have to say the worst thing it does is completely ignore OOP, every program in it is one class. And according to the author, creating programs with separate classes is beyond the scope of the book. I've never heard such utter bullshit in my life.

[dream_coder]

True you did. Its a shame really because Pointer and References are explained pretty well.

[RyanPridgeon]

Here, I'll actually answer the question.

No, STL is NOT a necessity.

(for example, std::string's are a lot slower and resource-hogging than dynamic char arrays,

Most of the time strings are just as fast as char[].

STL is good when used well

[Bullet Pulse]

The Beginning C++ Through Game Programming book will teach you almost all of the things you need to know to start learning SDL or another API.

However, it will take experimentation on your part to learn the book, because it is brief.
But as a programmer, you should be doing that anyway.

So good luck, and remember that it's important to test your knowledge by making programs that implement the things you are learning in whatever book you choose to learn from.

[MrDeathNote]

The Beginning C++ Through Game Programming book will teach you almost all of the things you need to know to start learning SDL or another API.

However, it will take experimentation on your part to learn the book, because it is brief.
But as a programmer, you should be doing that anyway.

So good luck, and remember that it's important to test your knowledge by making programs that implement the things you are learning in whatever book you choose to learn from.

Are you telling him to keep learning from a book that encourages bad programming practice? Just because the books brief doesn't mean it should be shit. It's the same length as Accelerated c++ practical programming by example which covers things like using header files/template classes/friend classes/STL and shitloads more that aren't covered in Beginning C++ Through Game Programming.