Hello World is good but....

[Beavbo]

Hey all,

I am a 3rd year college student majoring in computer science. So far we've done basic stuff in C++ and JAVA, mainly toy programs that don't do much useful work. Thats all well and good, but I think I would like to learn how real programs are set up (i.e. something more complex than a hello world type program).

I was wondering if anyone had good suggestions on a good project to follow on sourceforge or elsewhere for learning a bit more about programming. Y'know getting down to the nitty gritty of open source. :) Bear in mind I'm not really so bright and big words kinda confuse me. Ideally this would be something written in C++ or JAVA and not too terribly confusing but more importantly something with good commenting ( do *real* programmers even do much of that?). I was thinking of starting with KDE or OpenOffice and working my way up. :D

I look forward to any suggestions as I think this could be a somewhat interesting thread.

Thanks,




P.S. obligatory random interesting link of the day:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/12/11/myths.html

[mage492]

Well, here's the project I'm currently working on. It converts text into html, using my very own markup language! For example:

_b ... _b makes text bold.
_i ... _i makes it italic.
A line-feed puts in paragraph tags.
etc.

Yeah, it's conceptually a pretty simple program, but here's the trick. I find that, when I pop open even a moderately sized program, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. Maybe it's just me, but...

Anyway, take a program that starts really simple (like a text converter), and slowly add more and more features to it. Not only will you learn the code you need to implement those new features, but you'll also learn to make sense of bigger and bigger chunks of code!

Now, I'm sure you're wondering why I would bother, if I already know html (since I'd have to know it to write the converter). Well, it's mostly for a friend's use. She doesn't want any of the big features of Tex or Latex, but this simple one does the trick!

<edit> Looking at KDE or OpenOffice.org will give you a headache. Trust me! </edit>

[Beavbo]

I find that, when I pop open even a moderately sized program, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. Maybe it's just me, but...

Precisely why I was searching for something with some good commenting :) A program similar to what you suggest is along the lines of what I'm looking for, just something to play around with and maybe accidently learn something from in the process. Also, the KDE/OO.org bit was a joke, but sadly it turns out it just wasn't funny :-/

Thanks.

[Kaligraphic]

Take a look at Angband, a nice little rogue-style game. You can download the source and play around with it.

[f4_yellowjacket]

If you're interested in something you can really play with how about the quake 3 source code.

it's C... not C++, but it written VERY well and it's basically object oriented... believe it or not...
The commenting is only marginal but there are tutorials on the web, and the variables, strucks, etc are all named sensibly.


Mike