This is a very, very convoluted way of gate keeping.
> Try to focus on the maths and avoid looking at code examples.
Straight out dictatorship.
> If you want to understand it I highly recommend writing a neural network starting from a basic perceptron (no hidden layer) or even implementing basic linear regression with stochastic gradient descent. Then work your way up to a network with one hidden layer.
Like it's only way to understand backpropagation.
This quote is still valid to date.
“Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. ”
- Nikola Tesla
Trust me, you can't fool people for too long. Abstractions always wins the game.
I've done plenty contractual work on larger code bases that has C++98 to some extent. I will tell you what you will never truly understand the whole code base.
Sourcetrail does amazing job at explaining larger code bases. Check it out.
No. A lot of job posts out there that highlights the language version. For example, I saw a lot of job posts for C++11, C++17 so on. Heck even, some jobs directly mentions Modern C++.
Unfortunately, the C ++ Committee knows that universities do a terrible job teaching C ++, except the one Bjarne teaches. If you ask Bjarne, he will tell you the same things I said.
A lot of universities stuck in C++98. It will takes them 1000 years to adopt C++20 tho.
One of mistakes many universities do is teaching either C or Java before C++.
I find C++ as a minimal OOP language to get head start.
C++ -> Java
-> C
But if student is a complete noob to programming, I'd suggest to learn Javascript before going to C++
Again, this is to keep the intuition otherwise they will forget what they learnt.
I wish if many universities listened to Kate Gregory talk.
When you teach Java before C++,
Students try to write C++ in Java Style (Eg with new and delete). I answer plenty questions of students on Reddit's cpp sub who are trying to write C++ in Java style. I might make a talk on this in CPPCon.
When you teach C before C++,
Students try to write C with Classes.
But, as once Steve Jobs said,
"I used to think that technology could help education. I’ve probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I’ve had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent."
You can laugh at me, that's okay. But truth is truth!
By the way, This is my 50th throwaway account. I use them because I'm getting down voted to death when speaking in defense of C++.
I have worked with decades old codebases. I use up-to-date compiler where you get to use smart pointers and all the Modern C++ features. It's your fault if you not teach them how to upgrade the compiler. There is zero risk when compiling C++98 with C++11.
It's also student fault if he selects a company with C++98 codebase. The student shall do due diligence.
It's my advice for you to teach the Modern C++ before driving into legacy C++ sort of like how you teach History. You start what's current then drive deep under.
"C++ is a little better because they have experience with Java, but they are frequently mystified by constructors/destructors and how to manage memory manually"
It's wise to use Rust in Security Critical Projects. Please see Google Fuchsia, they follow hybrid approach where critical stuff written in Rust and rest in C++
You are doing it wrong If you are manually managing memory on Modern C++.
C++ has RAII built in even before Rust came to the scene.
I've never had a situation where I had to manage memory manually during my professional career in C++
If your students face seg faults, please show them Valgrind. Valgrind is better than GDB when it comes to seg faults. It can show you where exactly error occurred.
Edit: Oh I got downvoted for saying truth. I now know what they are really up to.