Re: New

Nate wrote:
> I am new to programming. I decided to start with C++. I just wanted to
> know what the best compilers are and the best self-teaching materials
> might be.

Regarding "self-teaching materials", let me suggest "You Can Do It!"
by Francis Glassborow. His book is about teaching programming to
beginners using C++, as opposed to teaching C++ to people who
already know something about programming. I haven't read the book,
but the author is a regular in comp.lang.c++ and the book seems to
be generally well-regarded.

As to whether C++ is a reasonable first language, I think that depends
in part on how it's taught. C++ can be used and taught as a fairly
high-level language, but it is often taught from the bottom up,
starting with the lowest-level language features as if it were C
(e.g., using pointers and null-terminated strings instead of the
standard string class) which tends to overwhelm beginners and
over emphasizes the wrong things.

.