Starting out with C++

C++ looks really difficult to learn. So many parenthesis, semi-colons, numbers; what do they all mean? Why is there a hash there? What does 'x' do?

This is exactly what I was thinking when I read some C++ source code. My dad tried to learn it ages ago, but he "couldn't get his head around it". Being the younger me, I always liked to one up my dad. I already had a pretty good grip on Python and LUA, and decided to learn to write in C++. We were all beginners at the start - however, most people have college courses and seminars to teach them to program.

I had a .pdf file I downloaded off the internet.

It was brilliant though. I would definitely recommend it to anyone starting out with C++. It was clear-cut, easy to understand, and it taught me to program (it can be found at http://www.cplusplus.com/files/tutorial.pdf). Every day I would spend atleast 2 hours a day infront of a computer screen reading and programming.

C++ has many many advantages:
-Stable has hell
-Faster than the road runner when his laptop battery is on 5%
-Versatile and flexible
-Portable
-Garbage collection
-Object orientated

It can get very frustrating though. The error messages you can get are very unhelpful (compiler-dependent).

Is C++ a good language to learn? IMHO, yes. It is probably the best of the C languages, but you should consider learning Java. I don't know anything about Java though, and can't say anything about it.

Thanks for reading :)