[SATLUG] Programming

[R. Tyler Ballance]

On Oct 13, 2006, at 10:13 PM, Travis Mosley wrote:

> Would anyone be willing to teach me how to program in C++? I tried  
> to use an online course and kept getting stuck. I would appreciate  
> any help to learn some programming skills.

For the record, C++ is one of the (quite possibly) worst languages to  
learn programming in. Stroustrop did some great things with it  
(method overloading, and classes was sorely missing from C, IMHO) but  
its still not a user friendly language in the slightest.

Java, Objective-C, and C# are compiled languages that I'd point you  
at, I'm not the biggest fan of scripting languages as learning  
languages, but I think those three can effectively teach you the  
constructs of object-oriented programming, and development in general  
that if further down the line you _need_ to do C++ development, you  
can pick it up relatively quickly.

If you _must_ however try to learn C++, online courses do suck, try  
taking an actual course, or read one of Stroustrop's book (at A&M, we  
basically got to proof-read his next major edition), and if all else  
fails, find an open source project to tinker with, check out  
boost.org, and dive in. You may not learn a lot structurally from  
experimentation, but you'll learn a lot.


Cheers.

p.s. I think Stroustrop is a great professor and computer scientist  
(he's a real nice guy too), but I think C++ has some short comings  
that (hopefully) the next ISO standard (C++0X) will address.

R. Tyler Ballance: Lead Mac Developer at bleep. software
contact: tyler at bleepsoft.com | jabber: tyler at jabber.geekisp.com