I'm thinking of making a video series on programming in C and then later maybe C++. I've been reading a lot of (mostly C++) programming books in preparation for this project.

My first video series will probably be a deconstruction/analysis of the 2nd edition of the K&R book (though yes, that's a really old version of C now).

I also thought it'd be good to take some refresher college courses on C++ to see how it's taught nowadays, the books used, etc. Luckily, my local community college had an online winter course and I signed up and started a couple of weeks ago.

Now, I've been programming in C and C++ professionally since 1991, so I didn't really expect to learn a lot whole lot in the introductory course (CIS-5), but here's some initial takeaways:

1. The recommended (not required) book is pretty outdated and, in my opinion, bad compared to all other C++ programming books I've owned (explains concepts in an odd order, gets things wrong). And it's *way* overpriced.
https://www.amazon.com/crappy_book/dp/013454484
so I'm just using a pirated PDF copy of it. Bleh.

2. The online labs/course work (in something called "Canvas") is hodge-podge, contradictory and just kind of a mess of video "labs" (more demos, with very low audio levels), bad copy/pasted UNICODE-translated (so, not compilable) source code, and links to another college professor's videos on YouTube that are pretty old and average:
https://www.youtube.com/@deborahs948

3. This professor seems to have internalized some incorrect idioms they repeat over and over (e.g. you #include a libarary in C++, "cout" stands for "console output", confuses declarations and definitions, etc.), has no concept of UNICODE, never bothers to explain *why* the preprocessor and C++ language are they way they are, depends on the IDE's editor to detect errors/warnings in the code (rather than the compiler), has no concept of the command-line, command-line options (e.g. for the builds tools), how to use Windows effectively (forget about MacOS, Linux, or ChromeOS). It's pretty frustrating watching/listening to them write code and explain concepts.

More than once, I've thought "aha! that's where these candidates that don't do well in our interview process got that wrong-concept from!". There's some fundamental stuff that's just not being taught correclty in some schools apparently.

So far, it's all console input (using std::cin) and output (using std::cout), basic math, algorithms, and now looping constructs. There's been a lot of focus on stream formatting (using of <iomanip>) which in my experience is not something used much in most C++ projects, but whatever. I am learning *some* things there that I hadn't used before. But I have to keep reminding myself: I'm not here to teach this class (or the professor) or even to get the highest score ever, just to learn what's good and bad about how C++ is being taught in schools these days. And towards that goal, it's going good!
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Re: Taking a community college CIS/C++ course
By: Digital Man to All on Tue Jan 16 2024 04:51 pm

DM> 1. The recommended (not required) book is pretty outdated and, in my
DM> opinion, bad compared to all other C++ programming books I've owned
DM> (explains concepts in an odd order, gets things wrong). And it's *way*
DM> overpriced.
DM> https://www.amazon.com/crappy_book/dp/013454484 so I'm just using a
DM> pirated PDF copy of it. Bleh.

C++ was taught in the software engineering program I did in college (which I started into in 2001). I had taken a couple of C++ classes from the CS department prior to the software engineering program, so I had a bit of a foundation already, and I still learned quite a bit. Sometimes I wondered why they chose the books they chose. I remember the initial book for the C++ classes seeming a bit complicated, at least compared to the book used by the CS teachers.

DM> 2. The online labs/course work (in something called "Canvas") is
DM> hodge-podge, contradictory and just kind of a mess of video "labs" (more
DM> demos, with very low audio levels), bad copy/pasted UNICODE-translated
DM> (so, not compilable) source code

Interesting.. Canvas sort of rings a bell, though I'm not sure if I've used it. My instructors in college just had us do our work in Visual Studio.

DM> 3. This professor seems to have internalized some incorrect idioms they
DM> repeat over and over (e.g. you #include a libarary in C++, "cout" stands
DM> for "console output", confuses declarations and definitions, etc.), has no
DM> concept of UNICODE, never bothers to explain *why* the preprocessor and
DM> C++ language are they way they are, depends on the IDE's editor to detect
DM> errors/warnings in the code (rather than the compiler), has no concept of
DM> the command-line, command-line options (e.g. for the builds tools), how to
DM> use Windows effectively (forget about MacOS, Linux, or ChromeOS). It's
DM> pretty frustrating watching/listening to them write code and explain
DM> concepts.

That definitely can be frustrating..
One time in college (before I took any CS or software engineering classes), I was thinking of going into CIS (Computer Information Systems) and was taking one of the required classes (around 2000), and one day the instructor said any animations on a web page are typically done with Java. I remember him talking about it fairly generically, and I had a thought that a lot of the animations I saw on web pages at the time were just animated .gif images.

In one of my C++ classes for the software engineering program, for cin and cout, one of the students in the class would often read those as "carry in" and "carry out"..

DM> More than once, I've thought "aha! that's where these candidates that
DM> don't do well in our interview process got that wrong-concept from!".
DM> There's some fundamental stuff that's just not being taught correclty in
DM> some schools apparently.

One time in my career, I was surprised to learn of something I didn't know, which apparently was not mentioned in my classes in college: That it's unsafe to do GUI-related things from anything other than the main thread. Either that wasn't mentioned in any of my classes, or somehow I missed it. I did have a couple of classes in college pertaining to making a GUI (one in MFC with C++, and another with WinForms using C#).

Also, I had a software engineer job interview once with a company that asked me to provide a code sample. I did (it was something I had written in C++). They were asking me some questions about it, and mentioned something about some of the logic in one of the functions possibly being refactored, and they had mentioned some obscure math theorem that I had never heard of..

Nightfox

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DM> I'm thinking of making a video series on programming in C and
DM> then later maybe C++. I've been reading a lot of (mostly C++)
DM> programming books in preparation for this project.

<SNIP>

I would be VERY interested in following this! Sure hope you're able to
do it, and thanks!

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Re: Taking a community college CIS/C++ course
By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Tue Jan 16 2024 05:53 pm

> DM> 2. The online labs/course work (in something called "Canvas") is
> DM> hodge-podge, contradictory and just kind of a mess of video "labs"
> DM> (more demos, with very low audio levels), bad copy/pasted
> DM> UNICODE-translated (so, not compilable) source code
>
> Interesting.. Canvas sort of rings a bell, though I'm not sure if I've used
> it. My instructors in college just had us do our work in Visual Studio.

The student is expected to edit, build, run their code in either Visual Studio/Visual C++ or XCode. "Canvas" is just the web app they use for organizing and delivering the assignments and accepting submissions. I think Canvas software is fine, but the professor hasn't done a lot of quality-control of the content. It's all over the place, includes old or repeated content and gives contradictory guidance (e.g. lab/assignment numbering). But it's a community college, so I don't think there's a lot of peer review (of the professor's content) going on.
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Re: Taking a community college CIS/C++ course
By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Tue Jan 16 2024 05:53 pm

> One time in my career, I was surprised to learn of something I didn't know,
> which apparently was not mentioned in my classes in college: That it's
> unsafe to do GUI-related things from anything other than the main thread.
> Either that wasn't mentioned in any of my classes, or somehow I missed it.
> I did have a couple of classes in college pertaining to making a GUI (one in
> MFC with C++, and another with WinForms using C#).

That depends on the GUI framework. Borland VCL provides mechanisms that can be used to safely update GUI components ("controls" they call them) from child threads. I've done similar stuff in MFC apps, so it's doable if necessary.
--
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> So far, it's all console input (using std::cin) and output (using std::cout),
> sic math, algorithms, and now looping constructs. There's been a lot of focus
> stream formatting (using of <iomanip>) which in my experience is not somethin
> used much in most C++ projects, but whatever. I am learning *some* things ther
> that I hadn't used before. But I have to keep reminding myself: I'm not here t
> teach this class (or the professor) or even to get the highest score ever, jus
> to learn what's good and bad about how C++ is being taught in schools these da
> . And towards that goal, it's going good!

Sounds like the prof maybe needs to take a lesson from you and take a
refresher course. ;)

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Re: Taking a community college CIS/C++ course
By: Digital Man to All on Tue Jan 16 2024 04:51 pm

>
> More than once, I've thought "aha! that's where these candidates that don't Now you know why so many people feel betrayed after getting their degree and
trying to get into the employment market. Half of what they have been taught
was full of shit and the other half is outdated. If anybody exits college with
useful knowledge, it is because their did their own research.

--
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Re: Taking a community colleg
By: Dumas Walker to DIGITAL MAN on Wed Jan 17 2024 09:42 am

> Sounds like the prof maybe needs to take a lesson from you and take a
> refresher course. ;)

:-)
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Re: Taking a community college CIS/C++ course
By: Arelor to Digital Man on Wed Jan 17 2024 01:23 pm

> Now you know why so many people feel betrayed after getting their
> degree and trying to get into the employment market. Half of what they have > been taught
> was full of shit and the other half is outdated. If anybody exits college
> with useful knowledge, it is because their did their own research.

Likely, but I also think the school/professor selection is a critical variable here. I've hired some great new grads and interns from universities with good engineering reputations that have demonstrated a solid comp-sci foundation. I can't afford to try every school's programming curriculum, but I'm definitely curious and plan to do some more research on this topic.

I plan to take the follow-up C++ courses (at minimum) at this same community college and will hopefully get a better sense of what the other professors have to offer. I hope it gets better, but either way, it's been fun so far.
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Re: Taking a community colleg
By: Digital Man to All on Tue Jan 16 2024 04:51 pm

> I'm thinking of making a video series on programming in C

I'd be interested to know what fields or modern applications there are for C
these days (besides vehicle automation apparently :)).

Have you checked out Dave's Garage? He's done some programming youtubes, so
may give you some ideas on how to keep the interest level up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0zxIfJJLAY&t=430s

Interested to hear how this progresses.

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Re: Taking a community colleg
By: Nopants to Digital Man on Wed Jan 17 2024 10:22 am

> Re: Taking a community colleg
> By: Digital Man to All on Tue Jan 16 2024 04:51 pm
>
> > I'm thinking of making a video series on programming in C
>
> I'd be interested to know what fields or modern applications there are for C
> these days (besides vehicle automation apparently :)).

Most Linux (kernel and driver) work is in C. Android (and several other embedded OSes) run on the Linux kernel.

> Have you checked out Dave's Garage? He's done some programming youtubes, so
> may give you some ideas on how to keep the interest level up.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0zxIfJJLAY&t=430s

Oh yeah. Read his book too (which was a bit of an epiphany for me and my family). Dave's great.

> Interested to hear how this progresses.

Will keep everyone here abreast of my progress.
--
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Re: Taking a community colleg
By: Digital Man to Nopants on Wed Jan 17 2024 01:38 pm

> > I'd be interested to know what fields or modern applications there are
> > for C these days (besides vehicle automation apparently :)).
>
> Most Linux (kernel and driver) work is in C. Android (and several other
> embedded OSes) run on the Linux kernel.

All Apple products (e.g. iOS devices, watches, etc.) have a significant amount of compiled C code in them too.

Oh yeah, and you know all the smart bulbs, switches, thermostats, doorlocks, appliances, etc. in your house? They're most definitely running some code (there most critical coe) that is written/maintained in C.
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Re: Taking a community college CIS/C++ course
By: Digital Man to All on Tue Jan 16 2024 16:51:13

> I'm thinking of making a video series on programming in C and then later maybe C++. I've been reading a lot of (mostly C++) programming books in preparation for this project.

Oh that sounds great - I will definately be watching those when you publish them!

> My first video series will probably be a deconstruction/analysis of the 2nd edition of the K&R book (though yes, that's a really old version of C now).

I learned how to program in C using a book titled "The C programming tutor" by Wortman and Sidebottom, which I recently re-purchased as I have misplaced my original copy.

https://archive.org/details/cprogrammingtuto0000womm/mode/2up

I watched a few introduction videos regarding C++ when it first came out, but never pursued it any further. I'm hoping your videos will rekindle my interest :)

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Re: Taking a community colleg
By: Digital Man to Nopants on Wed Jan 17 2024 02:40 pm

> Oh yeah, and you know all the smart bulbs, switches, thermostats, doorlocks,
> appliances, etc. in your house? They're most definitely running some code
> (there most critical coe) that is written/maintained in C.

I didn't realize that the ESP32 devices I messed with a few years ago was C++.
That was a fun way to learn. I need to get back into that. The stuff I built
so far 'just works' so I haven't touched it again. I guess that explains why
it is used for these embedded devices.

Will C++ knowledge translate to C?

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Re: Taking a community colleg
By: Nopants to Digital Man on Sat Jan 20 2024 09:36 am

> Will C++ knowledge translate to C?

Yeah, C is roughly a subset of C++. The languages have diverged and re-converged a bit over the years (and versions of their standards), but yeah, almost any experienced C++ programmer can program in C, though they often groan about it. :-)
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Re: Taking a community colleg
By: Digital Man to Nopants on Sat Jan 20 2024 13:53:44

> Yeah, C is roughly a subset of C++. The languages have diverged and
> re-converged a bit over the years (and versions of their standards), but
> yeah, almost any experienced C++ programmer can program in C, though they
> often groan about it. :-)

I think the thing that put me off learning C is the 1001 different compile options for gcc. If you're going to be working on more portable open source projects then there's a whole subset of stuff you problem need to know like the autoconf tools and the like.

The code will run faster but I'm happy just to rip off a bit of perl and be done with it. no compilation, no makes files.

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