Why C++ Questions on a C List

[Jonathan Bartlett]

For those of you who may wonder why so many C++ questions appear on a C
newsgroup, I thought I'd let you know of a bizarre experience I had
teaching as an adjunct at a local Junior College.

The class I was supposed to teach was "C Programming". There was also a
"C++ Programming" course which was the follow-on to the C programming
course.

What surprised me was that in the "C Programming" course they were using
a C++ book! That's right -- they were telling people they were teaching
them C and in reality they were teaching them C++! It wasn't even a
C-ish subset of C++. They were using cout, cin, and other C++-isms all
over the place.

When I asked why this was happening, they said "well, the C class
focuses on structured programming, while the C++ class focuses on
object-oriented programming". I almost had a heart attack.

Anyway, if you wonder why many people confuse the languages and wouldn't
know C if it hit them on the back of the head, but yet they _think_ they
know C, it's probably not their fault. Some teacher probably taught out
of a C++ book and called it "C".

Jon

 

[Chris McDonald]

Anyway, if you wonder why many people confuse the languages and wouldn't
know C if it hit them on the back of the head, but yet they _think_ they
know C, it's probably not their fault. Some teacher probably taught out
of a C++ book and called it "C".

I suspect another reason is the job market.
A large number of advertisments call for C/C++ programmers in one breath and
job descriptions are notorious for being written by those whose positions
are unrelated to the actual job offered.