Which direction should I go?

[cdcamaro9534]

Hey everyone, this is my first post so please bear with me!!

I have a question about what I need to do here. Currently I am a Electronic Technician for a company that develops breath analyzers. Mostly if not all of my job involves hardware and infrared troubleshooting. Basically I deal with spectrum analyzers. But down the road I have an opportunity to not only develop new hardware, but I will have to write code for this hardware to work.

Now my question is that since these instruments run C++ embedded software, where should I begin at learning? I have taken QBASIC, and .NET classes in college, so I'm no beginner, but I do plan on starting from the basic's and working my way back into it. I was thinking it would be good to grab a book on C, and start from there. Any recommendations for starting to learn embedded code?

[sevenhalo]

If you want to familiarize yourself with the syntax and not jump right into C, try PASCAL. Java is also an option, but it's not nearly as raw.

[Shaggy Hiker]

In this case, I think I will disagree with 7H, though I don't usually. C is a really obvious language for embedded systems, and not nearly as difficult as you might think. The complexity comes when you add C++ on top of C, but the syntax between the two is virtually identical. Better yet, since you are working in an embedded environment, you will almost certainly be restricting you usage of C++ to a very C-like subset. Pretty much everybody works with only a subset of the sprawling, experimental, language that is C++ (just look at the STL to see what I mean). I would expect that for embedded systems, which are generally SEVERELY memory limitted, that you would stay either with C, or a C like set. That being the case, why not just learn C? The hardest part about it is the character based syntax, in my opinion. It just isn't always easy to remember == vs =, & vs &&, and all those semicolons. Starting into C would get you into the habit of the operators, which is half the battle for you in that language.

[sevenhalo]

The only reason I recommended it was because I was brought into Java/C through PASCAL. It worked for me and I didn't get too deep into it. Just enough to get me comfortable. But yeah, if you want to bite the bullet, I wouldn't even mess with PASCAL and go right into C++. Since you had alot of the same background I had (QBASIC), I offered it. Now, it begs to question, were you VB.Net or C#? If you were VB.Net, my suggestion still stands, if not only for ease of transition. If it was C#, then by all means... Skip PASCAL and go right into C++.

[cdcamaro9534]

7H, I was strictly VB.NET 2003. I've been reading on a old C++ book that was given out by my college about 2 years ago for free, but I'm thinking I just need to start with C, and once I get the base figured out from inside and out, start supplementing with C++.

Just so you know I know are programmers write with Paradigm C++ Compiler, which from what I understand will compile in ANSI C and ANSI C++.

Thanks for your help, I am newbie to most of this, but I plan on getting this down, just got to sit down and do a lot of reading in the books and this site. So I plan on asking a lot of questions on here!!