C++ is a general purpose programming language developed in the early 1980s by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs. It is similar to C, developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie, but is a safer language than C and includes modern programming techniques such as object oriented programming. A versatile and powerful object-oriented programming language, C++ is widely used today in business and scientific applications. C++ programmers are needed to develop desktop software, including operating systems, productivity software and games. Typical programming tasks that a C++ programmer can do include putting data into a database or pulling it out, displaying high speed graphics in a game or video, controlling electronic devices attached to the PC or even playing music and sound effects. He can even write software to generate music. It is a highly developed programming language in terms of operators, simplicity, and the ease of notation. This allows for data abstraction and the use of several programming paradigms: procedural, object-oriented and generic. It is characterized by high performance of the object code, direct access to hardware resources and system functions, ease of creation and use of libraries, independence of a specific hardware or system platform and a small execution environment. The main areas of its application are applications and operating systems. There are many C++ jobs out there and an immense body of code exists that will need updating, maintaining and occasionally rewriting. According to Tiobe, the top three most popular programming languages are C, Java and C++. The C++ Associate Programmer Certification fully covers the basics of programming in the C++ language and presents the fundamental notions used in object-oriented programming. It starts with universal basics, not relaying on object concepts and gradually extends to advanced issues observed in the objective approach. The examination can be taken at any Pearson VUE testing center worldwide.


machine and high-level programming languages, compilation process
obtaining the machine code: compilation process
recommended readings
your first program
variable – why?
integers: values, literals, operators
characters: values, literals, operators
dealing with streams and basic input/output operations


how to control the flow of the program?
floating point types: values, literals, operators
more integral types: values and literals
loops and controlling the loop execution
logic, bitwise and arithmetic operators


functions: why do you need them?
declaring and invoking functions
side effects
different methods of passing parameters and their purpose
default parameters
inline functions
overloaded functions


converting values of different types
strings: declarations, initializations, assignments
string as the example of an object: introducing methods and properties
namespaces: using and declaring
exception handling


class: what does it actually mean?
where do the objects come from?
class components
constructors
referring to objects
static members
classes and their friends
defining and overloading operators


base class, superclass, subclass
inheritance: how does it work?
types of inheritance
inheriting different class components
multiple inheritance


polymorphism: the notion and the purpose
virtual methods: declaring and using
inheriting virtual methods
abstraction and abstract classes


what is STL and benefits from the use of STL
containers, adapters, iterators
vectors
lists