Coming next week on Microsoft Virtual Academy:

C++: A General Purpose Language and Library

by Kate Gregory and James McNellis

Live on November 19, 2013, 9:00am-5:00pm PST (other time zones), later on demand

Cost: Free

With these speakers, we expect a high quality talk. If you're new to C++, or know someone who is and would like to learn about the language, watch and recommend this talk. This event uses the Microsoft Visual Studio environment, but the content is applicable to new C++ developers using any compiler and platform.

From the announcement:

Attention developers: here’s a painless way to learn the basics of C++ from the ground up, whether you’re updating legacy code or writing brand new, efficient, and high-performance code for new platforms like phones and want to take advantage of C++.  You’ll learn the fundamentals of the C++ language, how to use the language and its Standard Library effectively, and how to use the Visual Studio environment for developing C++, including debugging, exploring code, and understanding error messages.  This is your starting point for building software in C++.

COURSE OUTLINE

• Introduction to Programming Concepts
• Getting Started
• The C++ Object Model
• Pointers and Indirection
• RAII – Resource Acquisition is Initialization
• The C++ Standard Library (STL)

INSTRUCTOR TEAM

Kate Gregory | Partner, Gregory Consulting Limited | @gregcons

Kate Gregory is a C++ expert who has been using C++ since before Microsoft had a C++ compiler, an early adopter of many software technologies and tools, and a well-connected member of the software development community. She has over three decades of scientific and engineering programming experience in a variety of programming languages. Since January 2002 she has been Microsoft Regional Director for Toronto and since January 2004 she has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional designation for Visual C++. In June 2005 she won the Regional Director of the year award, and she was one of the C++ MVPs of the year for 2010.
Kate is the author of over a dozen books, mostly on C++ programming; the latest, on massively parallel programming with C++ AMP, was published in fall 2012 by Microsoft Press. Her firm, Gregory Consulting Limited, is based in rural Ontario and helps clients adopt new technologies and adjust to the changing business environment. Managing, mentoring, technical writing, and technical speaking occupy much of her time, but she still writes code every week.

James McNellis | Microsoft Senior Software Development Engineer | @JamesMcNellis

James McNellis is a computer programmer and C++ maven. A senior engineer on the Microsoft Visual C++ team, James builds modern C++ libraries and is the maintainer of the Visual C++, C Runtime (CRT), and C Standard Library implementation. He was previously a member of the Microsoft Expression Blend team, developing the XAML designer tools for Windows 8 apps. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2010, he spent several years working on real-time 3-D simulation and robotics projects in the defense industry. James is a prolific contributor on the Stack Overflow programming Q&A website and writes for the Visual C++ Team Blog.