C++. Worth learning?

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TheNATTEH

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#38184 24-Jul-2009 22:02

My IT Teacher at school recently gave me an offer to teach me how to make iPhone/iPod apps and teach me C++ and other languages. I wanted to know if C++ was actually worth learning. What other computer-languages are also worth learning? I sort of know HTML, but that's about all. And where's the best place to learn it.

dpw

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#238786 24-Jul-2009 23:10

Make iPhone apps? Are you sure it's C++ and not ObjectiveC? As with most cases in learning programming it's not so much the language but the framework that's going to be the big learning curve. In the case of iPhone/iPod/Mac OSX apps it will be Cocoa framework.

If you want to write iPhone apps the Apple Developer Network website is the best place to start.

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hellonearthisman

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#238869 25-Jul-2009 11:12

C++ would be a good language as it's so portable. A lot of the syntax structure can be used in other languages.

I'm going for PHP as it more of a web language, which is my interest.

Like dpw said above look at the iPhone dev site and see what they use in their sdk

foobar

186 posts

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#238879 25-Jul-2009 12:06

What do you mean by 'worth learning'?

If you want to learn a language to help your chance to find a job then look on the job-boards and see which language is in most demand. But beware: As dpw said, it's the framework that is the big learning curve, not the language.

To give you an idea: Once you work in the industry, you are pretty much expected to pick up a new language (as in: being able to debug existing code at least) after just a day or two of looking into it. I'm not kidding. That's why university or school IT courses that deal a whole year just with teaching you a language are a complete waste.

They: "Hey, we have this small app here written in Python, which has a bug somewhere. Everyone else is busy, so can you look into it?"
You: "But I don't know Python!"
They: "Well, I'm sure you can figure it out. BTW, we need this resolved by tomorrow afternoon..."

However, to be hired as a developer for a position that actually is advertised for someone with 'Java skills' or 'C# knowledge', etc., you will find that knowing the language means almost nothing. That's just assumed to be the case. What they really want to know is if you know the particular set of frameworks that they are using in their team. Because if you don't know them then they won't get much productivity out of you for a long time. If you don't know the ins and outs of the framework, you are likely to re-invent the wheel and generally do things in a wrong or inefficient way. You can know the language as much as you want to, it won't help. Language skills have hardly anything to do with that.

But back to the language: If your definition of "worth learning" means: Using it to learn new programming paradigms and environments then sure, the more the merrier: C++/Java/C# to get a feel of one of those mainline object-oriented static languages is not bad. Maybe you also want to look into Python/Perl/Ruby for one of the modern dynamic 'scripting' languages, since they look and feel quite different and learning at least one of those will broaden your horizon.

If you are interested in a very different approach of programming (functional programming), Lisp, Erlang or even Haskell might be of interest. There are many more, as you can see in the responses here: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6051

The blog: foobar on computers, software and the rest of the world: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar

lpcustom

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#243751 7-Aug-2009 04:37

Is oxygen worth breathing?

Ragnor

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#243919 7-Aug-2009 13:10

Is the pope a catholic?

freitasm

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#243921 7-Aug-2009 13:11

Ragnor: Is the pope a catholic?

Is he?

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yufjh

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#250366 25-Aug-2009 14:34

lpcustom: Is oxygen worth breathing?

lol, thats funny.

but if C is the ur language, does C++ 'inherit' its cosmological status? it's certainly very powerful but is it elemental?

i'm inclined to think maybe LISP has a claim to primacy. the first paper on LISP was published in 1958, and object orientation, exception handling, mice and windows were all first developed in LISP, as were most flavours of AI methodology such as functional and logic programming.

and then there's solder. this was the answer given by Steve Ciarcia (founder of 'Byte' and 'Circuit Cellar' magazines) when asked this question.

i suppose if we want negative definitions, we could say 'not Javascript, Snobol or VB'. but why?

by the way, does anybody know of any positions for a senior developer with 15 years C++ experience. i need a job....