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- Path: wizard.pn.com!news
- From: Alex Morgan <alex@tmfi.com>
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: first language
- Date: 4 Jan 1996 20:48:21 GMT
- Organization: Pioneer Global
- Message-ID: <4cheel$vv7@wizard.pn.com>
- References: <sumner-0301961112210001@sumner.tiac.net>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: vranx.tmfi.com
-
- sumner@tiac.net (Sumner Paine) wrote:
- >
- > Is C++ a good language for a beginner to learn on?
-
- IMHO:
-
- No!
-
- I come to C++ from a long and winding route through Pascal, assembly,
- C, and Objective-C, with experience with lots of other languages
- along the way- Fortran, PostScript, Smalltalk, etc. In my
- experience, C++ is the most complex language around. It has a lot of
- sophistication which makes it a power tool in the hands of an expert,
- but that sophistication is (to be totally blunt) generally over the
- head of a beginner. I see too much evidence in this newsgroup that
- C++ details make people's heads spin if they immerse themselves too
- sson... Witness the recent thread on how a derived class destructs
- private members of its superclass, where even the people *replying*
- to the question came up with code that won't even compile! Or
- consider the fact that I have seen working programmers in the field
- try to use pointers to local variables as return values of functions.
-
- I would recommend for complete beginner: Start with something fun
- and high-level, such as PowerBuilder or Smalltalk. (Or, if these
- high-level things seem too "squishy" for you, and alternate route
- would be to play with assembly- which in its way is easier than a
- high-level language, because nothing is hidden.) This will do a
- few things for you: 1) make money 2) build confidence and 3) most
- important, teach thinking like a programmer- in terms of loops,
- conditionals, variables, functions, stacks, arrays, etc., etc.
- Then take up C programming. Use a C++ compiler for your C programming,
- and gradually introduce C++ features into your code.
-
- Have fun!
-
-