Topic_02 : First program in Visual C++ IDE

 

 

Hello Viewers!

 

Welcome to the very first tutorial on programming.  Normally, 16 bit Borland C++ IDE is used to teach programming basics.  But, this tutorial may be alien to most of you.  Sixteen bit IDEs are easy to learn, but they are not powerful.  If you really want to do some serious programming, then use modern tools.

 

In this series of tutorials, you will be watching the screen shots of Visual C++ IDE, a modern compiler/IDE from "Microsoft

 

You can have a link to download the Express Edition of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005Open in a new window to download the required software

 

Coming back to the topic; in this page, you will be watching the steps to create a new program.  I expect that you know certain basics like GUI, saving and opening files in an explorer etc.  Here is the list of steps to be taken for creating a simple C program

 

 

NOTES:


1)This is the practical part of the tutorial.  Make sure that you read the theory part.
Click here to watch it.

2) To have a better view of the images, right click on them to save it on your disk/open in a new window

 

 

STEP - 1:

Now onwards, this kind of operations are denoted in a form like "File => New => Project"

step_01_Introduction

The above operations opens a dialog box for creating a new project.

 

 

 

 

STEP - 2:

In the dialog box above, expand "Visual C++", select "Win32", click on "Win32 console application", and finally, enter a name for your first project.  After that, press OK button.

 step_02_New_Project

 

 

 

 

STEP - 3:

Now, the IDE opens a dialog box for project properties.  In that box, select "Application Settings".  Select the "Application type" as console application and in the additional options, click the box beside "Empty project". Finally click "Finish" button.

step_03_New_Project_Settings

 

 

 

 

STEP - 4:

 

Perform menu operation "View => Solution Explorer" to get the solution explorer

 

step_04_View_Solution_Explorer

 

 

STEP - 5:

In the solution explorer, right click on the "Source Files" and select " Add => New Item"

step_05_Solution_Explorer

 

 

STEP - 6:

In the "Add new item" dialog box, expand "Visual C++",  select "Code", click on "C++ file"

Type the name of your program and then click on the "Add" button

 

step_06_New_File

 

 

 

 

STEP - 7:

Now you can type your program in the text editor.  A typical program looks like this..

step_07_First_Program

 

 

STEP - 8:

To execute your program, you should perform the menu operation "Debug => Start without Debugging"

step_08_Execute_Program

 

 

 

The output:

 

step_09_Output

It was because of your program, computer wrote "Hello World!".  It is an instruction to you by the computer, that pressing any key will take you back to the IDE.

 

 

Summary:

 

 

1) Create a new project by selecting windows console application

2) Add files to the Solution by clicking on the Source files of solution explorer


3) Type the program and execute it

 

Explanation:

 

Introduction to the Solution

Note: Please note that, VC++ is designed to solve complex  real world problems. If you really want to do some complex things, get prepared to handle that complexity.

    Remember that, we write software to solve a problem. (That problem could be any thing like differential equation or climate estimation or online business deals or national security or diverting the meteors that may fall on earth )

So, when we write a software to solve a problem, we'll get a solution.

A single solution may contain more than one project.

A single project may contain number of persons working on different things.


Now, In this context, the problem happens to be making the computer to say "Hello World!".



In order to do that,

1) We first start with creating a new project.  At this stage, we will be selecting what kind of project to start. 

We wont start with guns and bombs to save flood victims; we'll take food and shelter items. 

In the same way, we selected the project type to be windows console application, which means, all that we are dealing is a text based window, through which we can communicate with the computer.


2) The IDE (expanded as Integrated Development Environment) will automatically create a solution file for you. (You will be asked to save that file, before you quit the IDE).   And when the situation demands, you can create another project and can add it to this solution.

A solution must have at least one project.


3) Later we add some functioning bodies to that project, by means of source code files.  In these files, we teach the computer "How to do the things" or we can ask the computer to do the things, which are already learnt by it.

This concept is already dealt in the theory part of this tutorial.
Click here to read that concept.


4) Later we ask the computer to combine all those functioning bodies to meet our requirements, which happens to be answering the given problem.

    In this process, it is also possible to check if we made any mistakes.  It is called as debugging.  (bug means error in software).  When we are sure that there are no mistakes in our software we ask the computer to start solving the problem,(without debugging).

Again this is a bigger topic.  Click here to read more.