Stroustrup Says C++ Education Needs To Improve

simoniker writes "Over at Dr. Dobb's, C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup has given an in-depth interview dealing with, among other things, the upcoming C++0x programming standard, as well as his views on the past and future of C++. He comments in particular on some of the difficulties in educating people on C++: 'In the early days of C++, I worried a lot about "not being able to teach teachers fast enough." I had reason to worry because much of the obvious poor use of C++ can be traced to fundamental misunderstandings among educators. I obviously failed to articulate my ideals and principles sufficiently.' Stroustrup also notes, 'Given that the problems are not restricted to C++, I'm not alone in that. As far as I can see, every large programming community suffers, so the problem is one of scale.' We've discussed Stroustrup's views on C++ in the past."

Comments

C++ too ich and is fast becoming a niche language.

[MadHungarian]

I do believe that most people who learned C++ did not do so in an academic environment. It was more on the job training. When I interview a candidate, one question is "How do you rate yourself as a C++ programmer on a scale of 1 to 10?" It is amazing how many of them in the 8-10 range cannot explain the difference between a reference and a pointer, and how you initialize a reference in a class. Or what mutable means, or what templates are, or even what the three key elements of object oriented programing. C++ is a very (too?) rich language. I think many of the features will become less and less used and atrophy like our appendixes. Eventually C++ will be come the next FORTRAN.

BTW I've worked with C++ since 1992, but not any more. I can be 5 times more productive in C#. I actually dread having to go back into C++ code to fix a problem. 90% of the code that was done in C++ can now be done in C#.

Re:I'm just glad they're teaching C++ actively aga

[mikael]

Sometimes, when you want to prototype something quickly, being able to edit a test.cpp file with a basic int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) { } and compile it with a g++ test.cpp is the way to go. I would hate to forced to have to open up a IDE window, create a basic application, edit and register a couple of derived classes, a project build file, all to test something simple like some library functions.