Actually, I know of no reason to use them. The STL are better and are mainstream. It's pretty stupid to reimplement the same code over again (funny since they tryed to stress that in the class). But from my experiences from the AP class, very basic programs are hard for some people. Whether that was the teacher, the book, or they just don't get CS so easily, I don't know. But 3d games, big projects, etc. are definately off limits unless they are extra credit or something (for those of us who can do some of that stuff). -matrix21
I have to agree with Zppr on this one. I'm currently in the 11th grade and taking the AB AP Comp Sci class (The A AP Comp Sci one was the one I took last year, which involved C++ syntax and the AP Board header files). The AB class is all about data structures, algorithms, etc. My friend and I were the only 'geeks' in all the classes (3) and it was extremely easy for us (seeing that we already knew a lot of C++ from programming in it before). It was all *basic syntax* stuff with just a bunch of really *small* projects to reinforce that. Heck, we didn't even get into too much OO stuff. Even with that basic syntax stuff people were having problems. The teacher was terrible though (we had to correct him on more then his fair share of occassions since he didn't even understand what he was talking about - it was his first year as a comp sci teacher - and after about 4 months I was alone because my friend got caught hacking the school system and changing grades, thus being banned from the class and all the computers in the school). People really didn't get what he was saying at all. Sometimes, I could see why (by the way he explained it). Other times, I didn't know why. He was clear as daylight (probably because he copied straight from the book; Did I forget to mention the book is horrible? It's filled with typos, unusable code, and vague definitions). They just took it word for word with no real concept of what was going or why it (didn't) work(ed). It took them quite a number of months just to build an OO based elevator simulator that I could've hacked up in a day or two.. At least next year I get a real teacher who's a linux fanatic (wahoo!), so maybe if he thinks if the others can handle it, we can do some cool linux stuff. -matrix21
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Actually, I know of no reason to use them. The STL are better and are mainstream. It's pretty stupid to reimplement the same code over again (funny since they tryed to stress that in the class). But from my experiences from the AP class, very basic programs are hard for some people. Whether that was the teacher, the book, or they just don't get CS so easily, I don't know. But 3d games, big projects, etc. are definately off limits unless they are extra credit or something (for those of us who can do some of that stuff). -matrix21
I have to agree with Zppr on this one. I'm currently in the 11th grade and taking the AB AP Comp Sci class (The A AP Comp Sci one was the one I took last year, which involved C++ syntax and the AP Board header files). The AB class is all about data structures, algorithms, etc. My friend and I were the only 'geeks' in all the classes (3) and it was extremely easy for us (seeing that we already knew a lot of C++ from programming in it before). It was all *basic syntax* stuff with just a bunch of really *small* projects to reinforce that. Heck, we didn't even get into too much OO stuff. Even with that basic syntax stuff people were having problems. The teacher was terrible though (we had to correct him on more then his fair share of occassions since he didn't even understand what he was talking about - it was his first year as a comp sci teacher - and after about 4 months I was alone because my friend got caught hacking the school system and changing grades, thus being banned from the class and all the computers in the school). People really didn't get what he was saying at all. Sometimes, I could see why (by the way he explained it). Other times, I didn't know why. He was clear as daylight (probably because he copied straight from the book; Did I forget to mention the book is horrible? It's filled with typos, unusable code, and vague definitions). They just took it word for word with no real concept of what was going or why it (didn't) work(ed). It took them quite a number of months just to build an OO based elevator simulator that I could've hacked up in a day or two.. At least next year I get a real teacher who's a linux fanatic (wahoo!), so maybe if he thinks if the others can handle it, we can do some cool linux stuff. -matrix21