Slashdot Mirror
On-Line C/C++ Courses?
Jon_S asks: "I've been happily hacking on Linux for five years now, and actually started playing with computers back as a 7th grader in 1972 on a PDP-8. Somehow I didn't get into a directly computer-related field, but I soon will be. I'm going back for a masters in GIS and I will need to have some solid programming background. I've coded FORTRAN programs back in college, read lots of programming books, and have written my share of shell scripts. The one thing I haven't tackled is C or C++ programming." Put simply, the submittor is hoping to find some quality C/C++ courses on line. Any hints?
"I know I can handle this stuff, I'm a certifiable geek, but to learn something you have to do it. The only way I see myself progressing this way is to take a course that will present the right types of programming challenges that I will need to develop my skill.
Searching on Google brings up tons of courses, but there is no way to tell whether any of these are any good. There are some great courses at RIT and I know this is a good school (friend of mine got a M.S. online there), but the good classes are filled this quarter and will probably next as well."
To quote my somewhat famous CS professor, "Learning a language is something you do over the weekend. If that's not the case, you're in the wrong field." After programming, albeit on and off, for almost 30 years you should have mastered the key areas of computer programming - abstraction, specification, modularity, abstraction, procedural programming, and more abstraction. All the rest is just details. OOP might be a bit of a leap but you'll probably find that it's just a cleaner way of doing things you would be doing anyways. Memory management is a really easy task to grasp - or just learn Java! It's far more marketable than C or C++ nowadays. Strong typing, etc - a 15 minutes lesson. Good luck!
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Does anybody else remember that old PSA where Abe Lincoln is at the employment office, and when they ask if has a diploma, he replies that's he's done a lot of studying out of books, sort of on his own?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
meanwhile, I ran across this site: http://www.r1edu.org run out of MIT that organizes what I am looking for.
The best options seem to be this certificate program from the University of Washington (note, the course descriptions actually suggest Linux rather than DOS or windows for your C programs; how far is this place from Redmond?). Or one of these courses from one of my alma maters, Cal Berkeley.
Anyone know anything of these programs. Good schools at least.