8 replies to this topic

[WingedPanther]

For me, I had the basics down in a month or two. It took me a few more months to start getting my mind wrapped around thinking in OO fashion. For me, operator overloading came easily because I had a lot of experience with various operators from my math background, but I've seen students struggle horribly with it.

An interesting excercise for anyone starting to get OO concepts in their head would be the following:

Download and install Dynamic Draw(a free flowchart/diagram program for Windows). Looking at the properties of the various types of objects you can create, construct a class inheritence hierarchy along with the properties/methods you think are present under the hood. Note: I know it was written using MFC, and has some of the most obvious OO design properties in a program that I've ever seen.

[John]

HTML and PHP really aren't first. Those are web based programming languages. If you intend to build applications for the internet thats the way to go, however C++ is an OS based programming language. Most CS classes tend to teach Java first, I guess because it is easier than C++ and allows you to grasp the OOP concepts without having to be bothered with a more complex code, but then again I'm not a CS teacher so I really dont know why. In my opinion if you want to learn C++, go for it, I think it is more efficient to spend, say, 2 years mastering one programming language rather than spending 1 year learning Java and then spending another year learning C++

[Crane]

Still learning here. I learn something new in the language every time I use it. :)

[WingedPanther]

The reality is that programming isn't for everyone. A desire to learn how to program is 90% of what it takes to get there, though. Just go for it and ask questions. Obviously, for things that look a little too much like homework I only give hints, but for concepts I'll be happy to answer questions.

I look at programming and math as kind of the same. It takes a while to get really good at calculus, and it takes a while to get really good at programming (in any language). If you don't start down the path, though, you'll never get there.

[WingedPanther]

It varies. I work with programmers who have had no more than calculus. When we have to do some statistics work, I get called in to help. Really, it all depends on the type of programming work that you're doing. For me, I started with math, and have picked up programming along the way. One side-effect of this is that I'm the only person at my job who seems to like C++. We use Delphi for coding work, and they prefer RAD languages. I like the power of C++, but acknowledge it will slow down some of the GUI development, if I ever get to that in C++.