Hi, I have been doing C and a bit of C++ for a while now, however I am unsure where to go next or what to concenrate on. People have told me about Visual C#, however I am not too sure how much like C/C++ it is. I have also been told about Visual C++ but I always thought it was a Microsoft C++ IDE. Could someone please explain the differences in all of the C variants (ojective C ), and if possible what each ones pros and cons are. I am mainly looking into optimised windows applications. Thanks for all of your help.

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Your are right, Visual C++ it is a Microsoft C++ IDE. If you learn Visual C++ then you will be able to build Window applications (but only for Microsoft) in a powerful way. If you want to learn a way to develop Crossplatform window applications i think you should move into OpenGL/GLGooey. I can not point you to good tutorials because i am looking myself for a good one but i can point you to http://glgooey.sourceforge.net/ which is the official home page of GLGooey. There you can find a couple of screenshots about UI built with GLGooey.
if you discover a good resource, let me know ;-)

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Actually I thought you meant a true C subset language like LUA or Cg, used for specialized programming.

Well, many people consider Visual C++ the standard (God knows why) but it has it's own format and such extra extensions. Well, I'm not too familiar with C# but I'd advise you to go ahead and master C++ because that's the easiest trade-in between programming ease and optimization especially on the win32 platform. Although Win32 was programmed mostly in C, C++ is rather useful because many win32 applications are programmed in C++ and programs like Mathematica are compatible with it first.
It's almost essential to learning OpenGL properly, since all the include files are based on it. Nehe's OpenGL tutorials on nehe.gamedev.net first came out in Visual C++ style.

Don't worry too much about the Visual C++ IDE thing if you don't have the money for it. They made a free version of it (without the extreme optimization) and a link's on www.thefreecountry.com. Or you could use DevC++ which uses the gcc compiler and has a convert-VC++ projects-to-gcc style command, perfect for dealing with it.

Hey Mizako, I like the idea of a small GL crossplatform development tool. They haven't worked on it for a while though...

 

 

 

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Hi,
I know some guys that are game's developers. They use this GLGooey to provide a crossplatform interface. Hopefully developers move to that option...

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Hmm... that can take some time to get established. With libraries like SDL and such it might have a hard time becoming a crossplatform foundation. (Since SDL-GL exists) I haven't tried using it yet due to a lack of time, so I can't tell anything from experience. Good luck to them though!

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