CS215 - Notes and Resources

Text: "Visual C++ .NET: How to Program", by Deitel et al

General Hacker Stuff

IBM DeveloperWorks - A great resource for developers, with articles, tutorials and links to software.

Object-Orientation Tips - A neat page with a ton of information about OOP

Dr. Dobbs - One of the best general interest programming magazines around. Their site has links to essays, tools, code, tutorials and other goodies.

Guru of the Week - a regular series of C++ programming problems created and written by Herb Sutter.

O'Reilly DevCenter - A nice collection of sites, each devoted to a particular aspect of programming, from Mozilla to .NET.

Course-Related Links

MSDN Home page - The Mother Ship.

Microsoft Visual C# - A nice tutorial site

C# Tutorial - Tutorials for beginning to intermediate programmers

The Code Project - Tons of tutorials, articles and sample code

Yet More C# Tutorials - Just what

Deitel Home - Home page for the authors of our textbook

.NET API Documentation - Straight from MSDN, ready to use for the final exam

Game Development

Free Game Programming Libraries and Code - Just what it says.

DevMaster.net - Online source for game development

GameDev.net - Another online resource for game developers.

The Game AI Page - A good reference for building smarts into your games.

Open Source Gaming

(One of the best ways to learn how to code is by reading someone else's code. This section is meant as a resource for a wide variety of games that have source code freely available.)

Bzflag - Think 'Capture the Flag' with tanks. This is a cross-platform, multiplayer networked game that has a very active community. It's available for free, complete with source code and documentation.

Cube - A basic First Person Shooter game, similar to Quake 3. What makes this useful is that the code is freely available so you can learn how to code a game like this yourself and even adapt the code for your own use.

Open Source Gaming - A nifty site devoted to open source games for multiple platforms in various languages.

Open Directory: Games - A page of links to open source games and game development projects.

Home of the Underdogs - Yet another collection of links to open source gaming projects.

 

Organizations/Projects

Mozilla - The Mozilla project is producing the next-generation Web platform.

OpenOffice - The OpenOffice project is producing a free, open-source competitor to Microsoft Office.

General Resources

ComputerWorld - If you want to see how computers are really used in real businesses, this is a good source. Essentially an offshoot of Computerworld magazine (available as a free subscription if you can convince them that you influence buying decisions where you work) , this site is pretty platform independent and has a decent career section, as well as a 'gossip' column where actual IT folk write in anonymously and describe the various ways that management can screw up the techies.

Advogato - This is an interesting on-line discussion forum, mainly dealing with software development.

CPUniverse - If you were thinking of going into contracting or consulting, this is a great site. Affiliated with Contract Professional magazine (not a free subscription but well worth the cost) this site has tips on the hottest skill areas, what it's like to work in different parts of the country and even how to negotiate a contract and handle your tax situation. There's even a free weekly e-mail newsletter.

SoftPro Books - This is an excellent source for computer and networking books. You can order online or go to one of their local stores. (They have one at Yosemite and Arapahoe in Englewood and another in Boulder.) You can usually get 10-20% off the list price and if you join their 'frequent shoppers' club (it's free) you can get additional savings. 

GoCertify - A nice site that has information on just about every technical certification you can get -- who offers it, what you need to get it, where you can get training and where/how you can take the test.

BrainBench - Another certification site, but this one does their own online certification exams in a wide variety of technical subjects.

Online References

Online Computer Dictionary - Stuck trying to figure out an acronym or computer term? This is a good site to look it up. 

Google - One of the best search engines out there for the technically inclined. 

FAQs Online - Here's the one-stop shop for looking up Internet FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and RFCs (Requests For Comments). 

igrep - They bill themselves as "the first (and only) vertical niche search engine specifically aimed at developers and other people deeply interested in technology".  I can't vouch for that at this point, but this might be a worthwhile resource.  (By the way, 'grep' is a command used by UNIX hackers to search through files.)

Just for Fun

Ubersoft - A funny comic strip about a mythical software/OS vendor located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest....

User Friendly - Yet another comic strip that looks at the funny side of computing.

Computer Stupidities - This site collects actual dialogues between real users and real tech support folk. The range of misunderstandings and confusion is frequently hilarious.
 

Peter's Evil Overlord List - Thinking about a career as an Evil Overlord? Think you have what it takes to be the next Darth Vader? Check out this site for a collection of SuperVillain Do's and Don'ts including 'My ventilation shafts will be too small to crawl through'.

The Voice Actor Page - Want to know who does the voice of Larry 3000 on Time Squad?  Find the answer to this and many more questions about the men and women who do the talking for your favorite cartoon characters.  Search alphbetically by show title or actor name.  (By the way, Larry is voiced by none other than Mark Hamill.) 

 

Notes
Sample Code and Solutions
  • Final Scores

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this site are those of the author and are not necessarily those of his employer, Westwood Technical College or its affilliates. This material is intended to supplement the class lectures and text and is not required to complete the course.

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