Another Newbie Question: C or C++

[Gaston Benitez]

first of all, sorry by my English

I am agree with people who says take courseworks, and those who say learn
your self, I did both, but first I had to learn on my own, and that´s really
a very, very hard task to do! ;) and I only recomend it if you are some kind
of Indiana Jones and have time enought to dedicate it . The benefits of self
teaching I found, were the goals. The first time I made a pointer works were
the hapiest day of my life!!! and the first program I made can you imagine!?
:)
Another thing to point to is the fact that someone who learns on his/her
own, has a more accurate knowledge regarding errors mesages, time compiling
messg, and almost any kind of the most strange errors messg that never occur
on the real life !! :)

I really like self teaching, altough every time I can, I take as much
courses as possible.

I learnt many things in that way, the first people who showed me Linux said
three things
That´s the way you get in
That´s the way you get out
That´s the way you get help!
Now I at the same time I´m using Linux, I use FreeBSD too.

By the way... now I´m dedicating time to asm.
That´s really, really hard!!

bye

Gastón

Again... Sorry by my English! :)

----- Original Message -----
From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at clunix.cl.msu.edu>
To: yo _ <exhausted01 at hotmail.com>
Cc: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: Another Newbie Question: C or C++


> >
> > >I would recommend not trying to learn C or C++ by yourself from a book.
> > >The fastest (and best way) to learn the right stuff is to take
coursework
> > >from a university or community college.
> >
> > >If the courses are any good, you'll get feedback, and you'll be paced
> > >and challenged with projects designed to help you learn.
> > >
> > >Going it alone in an unguided environment will only familiarize you
> > >the lesser aspects of a language, if you last that long. The difficult
> > >and most important aspects of the language (like pointers, virtual
> > >functions, references) will become almost insurmountable
trial-and-error
> > >obstacles if you try to teach yourself.
>
> This is a good point.  The person who takes a class should (prividing the
> class is well done) be guided through the whole range of the language.
> Whereas someone learning on their own just picks up the pieces they
> need at the moment and then fixates on those parts and doesn't go on
> to learn the whole range of the language.
>
> > If you want to get a lower paying and boring job programming in C/C++
for
> > whatever reason and have a piece of paper that says you can have that
job, I
> > recommend wasting 4-6 months taking a course in your spare time to learn
> > C/C++. If you want to be top of your game and learn C/C++ without
wasting
> > time on topics that take you a minute to understand, get a good book,
> > practice the topics you have learned at your own pace, get numorous code
> > examples for things you may want to do (sockets, GUI, OpenGL, ncurses,
> > threading, kernel interfacing) from the glorious and infinite internet
and
> > emulate good programming style (using const qualifiers in C++, using
> > #defines in C, etc.). Also be prepared to teach yourself because you may
not
> > always be prepared for a job you may find yourself with; learn how to
easily
> > learn and use external libraries.
>
> The only really valuable thing from this flame is the implication that
> you must go on and keep using the new learning and add to it from
> man sources.   It is not a waste of time to learn it right from the start.
>
> > The best programmers will teach themselves. A statement that may be on
the
> > borderline of opinion to fact by constant example. After all the first
> > programmer, in fact, taught herself.
>
> And it was a lifelong mistake-filled iterative process.   If the material
> was already there in the beginning as it is for C, C++, Fortran, Assembly,
> etc, then that lifelong process could have started at a higher level of
> understanding and moved on from their instead of having to spend so
> many years of rummaging around at the primative levels.
>
> Mostly, I am just responding to the making of a sweeping generalization
> that may apply to a very few, but for the most is meaningless.  It seems
> to take a narrow viewpoint to make up a flame.
>
> ////jerry
>
> > -Rian Hunter
> >
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