Re: Beginner to programming. References to understand terms.

[Gé Weijers <ge@...>]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 6:33 AM, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> wrote:

As for C, I still maintain that C++ is easier to learn - sensible
strings, nice containers to put things, etc - until you misplace some
punctuation and the compiler shares its confusion with you. Can always
drop down to C-level, but C is premature optimization, unless you
really have a dinky little micro with 4K RAM.

Writing good idiomatic modern C++ requires a lot of knowledge about templates, iterators, smart pointers, exception safety, lambda expressions, and lots more. It takes a long time before you're a proficient C++ programmer. Using it as a first teaching language may be cruel and unusual education :-)

Coding in C (and C++, probably) should be part of a CS curriculum, but I would suggest teaching the main concepts using something a bit more high-level.

Re: "dinky little micro": I've programmed in C++ on a MSP430G2452 (8K flash, 512 bytes of RAM). In my opinion coding a useful program for a very small micro like this 50 cent chip is an educational experience, it challenges the assumptions of people who have never used a machine with less than a couple of gigabytes of RAM :-)

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Gé