Teach Yourself Borland C++ in 14 Days - portal

266 Week 1
and turn it into a working program. You can’t necessarily do that at this point, but you can
get a good start. The program doesn’t have to be a Word, a Netscape Navigator, or an Excel
program, mind you—just a little something to help you tie in your education with some
experience.
The first part of this week you worked on C++ language keywords and syntax. Things like
loops and if statements are fairly easy to comprehend. Don’t be concerned, though, if you
have to go back and look up the syntax once in a while. There is a lot to learn, and you aren’t
expected to be able to memorize every keyword and its syntax. Later on you will, but at this
stage of the game it isn’t expected.
Toward the middle of the week you were introduced to structures and then to C++ classes.
Classes are the bulk of what C++ is about. The things we discussed on Days 1, 2, and 3 are
primarily features of the C++ language that come from the C language. Classes, though, are
pure C++. Sometimes it takes a while for you to grasp where classes can be used in your
programs. For a long time you might only deal with the classes that the VCL provides and
not write any classes of your own. Later on you will probably find situations where a class
would fit perfectly with a particular task you have to accomplish. When that time comes, you
will be ready to tackle writing your own class. After you’ve written one or two, you will likely
be off and running.
On Day 5 you got an introduction to class libraries, also known as frameworks. VCL is a
framework. A framework makes your life easier by encapsulating difficult Windows
programming tasks into classes that you can deal with on a more rational level. Believe me,
sometimes the raw Windows API appears to be anything but rational. VCL takes care of
dealing with those issues for you and provides you with a higher level of programming objects
that you can easily incorporate into your applications. No, VCL is not easy, but it is much
easier than dealing with the API that the VCL works to shield you from. As part of the
discussion on frameworks, you were introduced to the PME (properties, methods, and
events) model. You learned a bit about properties, methods, and events, and how you will
use them to build Windows programs in C++Builder.
At the end of this first week you were able to play around with the IDE a little. You learned
about the IDE: how to customize it to your liking, how the Component Palette works, what
the Object Inspector is for, and how to use the Menu Designer. This part of the week you
got into the fun stuff. It’s okay to use the word fun. I find all kinds of programming a great
deal of fun. That’s why I do it. Hopefully, you find it fun, too.
Finally, you ended the week by learning all about the Form Designer. The Form Designer
is where the bulk of your C++Builder applications will be designed—the graphical part of the
application, anyway. Working with the Form Designer can be fun, too. Using the Form
Designer you can create great-looking forms. Remember, a form represents a window in your
applications. Most applications have a main window and several dialog boxes that are