New thoughts on how to teach a new version of an old language

[Rui Maciel]

Now that C++11 is out in the real world, and considering the enhancements
that it received, how would you teach the language to someone starting out
in the programming world? Particularly, are there any features which could
lead you to change the way you would present the language to a newbie?


Thanks in advance,
Rui Maciel

 

[Pavel]

Now that C++11 is out in the real world, and considering the enhancements
that it received, how would you teach the language to someone starting out
in the programming world? Particularly, are there any features which could
lead you to change the way you would present the language to a newbie?

In general, I would wait till it really picks up; till then I would discuss
1998/2003/05 with the disclaimers about C++11 where relevant. But, below are the
most significant old-paradigm-breakers in my subjective experience:

1. Concurrency support in the language.

2. Alignment support allows laying out memory in a portable way.

3. When storing objects in an STL container, in many scenarios where before an
object would have to be of a copy-xxx-able type, move-xxx-able is enough.

Thanks in advance,
Rui Maciel

-Pavel