massive-war

...books. Ha, fooled you.

I'm entering a BPA competition in my high school for c++ programming. The good part is that they let you use any material you want to during the test (you have questions to answer and a program to write), except previous tests.

So, with that in mind, I was trying to strategically plan on having different books for different situations.

I was thinking along the lines of:

Book 1) Quick Reference
------------Some medium sized book to give me basically a quick index if I --------------need to look up something like specific syntax

Book 2) Full blown learning experience
------------Say I totally forget how to do something, and I need a step-by-
------------stepper to guide me through it. Granted, the test is made for the
------------overall use of the language, and it probably won't be any harder
------------than writing stuff to files, but still, I'd prefer to have something

If you have any ideas on a/some book(s), then please let me know

Massive-war

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java_roshan

Do you know what are the topics that you have to prepare for?
You have knowledge of the exam a few months before!

If the answer to the above questions is yes, then

1) Collect some different kinds of books like
a) The Complete Reference, C++
b) Teach yourself C++ in 24 Hours (or whatever number/days)
c) Data Structrures with C++
d) C++ Primer
2) Make notes/points for each of the topics to be covered as a word document/write it down in a A4 sheet of white paper
3) Spiral Bind it and take it and state that is a customized (or compiled ) book

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nnxion

Uhmm if you're a good programmer, then you really don't need any books, except maybe some that have man pages printed (if you can't get them off of the computer).
Just practice A LOT previous tests.

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teencoder

My favorite for C++ concepts is "C++ Programming for the Absolute Beginner". It covers consoles to Windows. The Win32 section is very short but the rest is great.

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massive-war

It's basically an overall c++ programming course.

They try to cover the outline of the language. It's not insanely hard, but it is timed and they grade you on your coding accuracy and readability.

I wanted to bring a couple books just in case. I know for a fact that they have file input/output that always deals with the manipulation and re-representation of that data, so I can assume fstreams are important (which I can do).

That's why I wanted like a little reference book. Something that I could use for almost anything related to c++ that would help syntaxfully or whatever if in case I needed it.

And for whoever said that if you "know" c++ then you shouldn't need a book.... obviously you haven't mastered the language yet. And I can say that because no one has. It's like english... there's always something you can learn, no matter how good you are at it.

I'm pretty sure you don't remember every math function in the cmath.h header... because I don't. That's why I need something to have that stuff in it.

Massive-war

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pal

just use google

java_roshan

Aah..I dont even know that there is a cmath.h header and there are math functions.
I only remember a few functions in C with the header math.h

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massive-war

No it's cool, I wasn't directing it at you anyway.

But you get my point, don't you? I want something like that, so if I need a quick "function" I can look it up.

And I didn't use google because I'd rather rely on people who know what they're talking about then searching through different forums for the answers

Massive-war

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groovicus

I just completed competing in the AMC/IBM International Colegiate Programming Contest, and the only thing I actually used (as far as reference materials) was a template we had prepared beforehand with some basic input and output routines, formatting, etc. I had a mountain of other books with me, and never even cracked them. Generally the code involved isn't the hard part, it's figuring out a way to solve the problem that is hard.

In general, Internet access will be disabled, but the API will be available. (We didn't even have to use those). In general, you don't have enough time to be researching a bunch of routines. If you don't know how to do a problem, do a different one. In my region, we had nine problems to do in 5 hours. The regional winner got seven. Most teams got three. Focus on the ones you know you can do, and save the others for when you have those done.

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java_roshan

Are these kind of examinations (massive-war) called as "Open Book Exams" ??

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