[ale] C++ Fatwa! (was Language Jihad!)

[Fulton Green]

Awesome points. Since the "Learn <language/> in <amount/> <timeunit/>s" don't
really cut it, does anyone know of a good solid book (or set of books) that
provide(s) a solid foundation for C++? I know there's "Thinking in Java" by
Bruce Eckel, but you all may know of another one ...

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 04:36:48PM -0600, Joseph A. Knapka wrote:
> The problem I have with C++ basically stems from all the "Learn
> C++ in 24 Hours" books you see on the shelves these days (not
> as many as five years ago, but still pretty numerous). C++
> is *not* a language anyone can learn in 24 hours: it has
> all the low-level issues inherited from C wrt memory managment
> etc, but buries them under an order of magnitude greater
> complexity. I pick up those books and look at them from time to
> time, and without fail they neglect to mention language features
> that you *must* know about in order to write correct C++ code.
> (Examples for the initiated: virtual dtors, delete vs delete[].)
> The result of the C++ fad is that there is an enormous amount of
> horrible, broken C++ code in the world, and an enourmous number
> of incompetent C++ programmers. This is not entirely the fault
> of those programmers!
> 
> There are other languages that let you do what you want, that
> have a feature set comparable to C++, and which you can
> learn more or less completely in a couple of weeks. Use
> them if you can.
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