[Sussex] Linux IDE's

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 00:46 +0100, Rupert Swarbrick wrote:
> If you're a cheapskate like I was when I started, get an ancient book
> about C from the public library. It will have been written in 198x, but
> will give you a thorough grounding in memory management, functions,
> pointers etc. that most C++ books that I've seen friends with seem to
> ignore as being 'too difficult' (or beyond the 24 hours they claim to take!)

Hmm... any book that hopes to teach you _anything_ about C++ in 24 hours
may as well be a copy of "Alice in wonderland"

> gcc will cope happily with C and once you know that well, C++ isn't too
> big a step up - just use what you need from the STL.

I think the point I was making since the start of this thread was that
this _isn't_ sufficient.  Or at least it isn't in some companies. 

To be clear, there are many companies where want you're saying would be
enough, but there are many other companies where you'd be a laughing
stock if you implemented things in that way.  The latter group are the
"High church" C++'ers.

If you're planning to work with other C++ programmers, especially if
you're planning to have a career in C++ then you need to be prepared for
both groups of people.  You shouldn't just be taking little bits of the
STL, you should understand it fully and be prepared to implement
functionality in it's style.  Using the STL isn't just using a vector
when you would have used an array its about being confident in the
implementation of containers, sequences, iterators, and so on and so
forth.

> Warning: If you want to learn C/C++ (and I _really_ recommend it), don't
> expect pretty graphics any time soon. The libraries tend to be wierd and
> wonderful - you'll be 'printf'ing for some time yet!

No!  Sure you can printf, but "NO!" and I repeat "NO!".

If you walk away from a C++ book and your first instinct is to go:

  printf("Foo %s\n", bar);

.. instead of:

  std::cout << "Foo " << bar << std::endl;

..then you should go and read another book or be prepared to justify
this usage very strongly when you come to an interview.  This is a very
trivial example of the problem I'm talking about.  It's not that printf
is inherently bad, it's just that it's not the way C++ programmers
should think.  BTW, if your justification for using the C style was that
it's shorter then, sorry, you don't get the job.

-- 
Geoffrey Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation