Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!apple!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!uw-entropy!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ too complex
Message-ID: <1740@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 7 Nov 88 19:32:18 GMT
References: <192@imspw6.UUCP>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 33

In article <192@imspw6.UUCP> bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) writes:
>    By comparison, for instance, it would not seem to be asking very much
>to wish all high school graduates to understand mathematics at least
>through advanced calculus and differential equations (or to understand
>C++).  To me at least, the problem is in attitudes and in the manner in
>which things are taught, rather than in any lack of innate learning
>abilities amongst the general population.

Yah, I agree. When I finally learned calculus (in college), I wondered
what all the fuss was about. All my life I'd heard that it was so tough.
It ain't anywhere near as bad as it's reputation.

I had an economics text in college that once had two pages of complex
algebra. When I finally waded through it all, I discovered that what
they were trying to calculate (marginal rate of return) was a simple
derivative that could have been done in 1 line! All that algebra was
basically a proof of differential calculus! The book never mentioned
the unmentionable, that he had just (surprise) done calculus, because
if it had, the assuption was that the reader would give up before he
started.

I got real tired of school counselors saying that I couldn't learn things
because they were 'too hard for me', or were 'college level', or only
'older kids' could handle it. !@#$%^&* (Aside to women readers: you aren't
the only ones to get this nonsense!)

C++ isn't so bad. The reason (I believe) that the C++ book is difficult
for object-oriented beginners is because it gives you a lot of
implementation details without properly explaining the concept behind
OOP. (This is not a flame at the book, it's just that another book needs
to be written for OOP novices.)

I speak from experience, I had a lot of trouble with C++ until I read
some Smalltalk stuff, then suddenly it all made sense.