Why does taking a programming class in a language you already know suck so much?
Allow me to explain with a short narrative:
Mr. X begins to lecture about variables and constants, a hopelessly minute and thoroughly understood topic for an individual such as myself who already codes in the language he is teaching. As I begin to snooze through his soporism, I miss his discussion about the differences between
constants and
variables, assignment to variables, the various types of variables, etc. Not a problem. I know this, after all.
Some time later, I am awakened and we promptly turn to our computers to begin work on the exercises that Mr. X has assigned for the day. No problem: "Write a program that demonstrates the difference between a constant and a variable." I write out the code in about 3 seconds. Next task: "Write a program that accepts a
radius as input, stores it in a variable, and computes the
circumference of the
circle". Easy. Done in 3.2 seconds.
I go home thinking that all is well as good in
AP Computer Science. But what do I find the next day? I lost half credit on both exercises. Why? I forget to print out my name before the rest of the output of the
code and because I did not use a constant to represent
pi in my circumference program! Sure, I did not exactly follow instructions (of course, I was asleep during the lecture), I can understand that. But half
credit?! It's like I forgot to write a
return statement if I was workin with
recursion.
As for you, Mr. X. You are the most ignorant programming teacher I have ever known! I have never heard so many incorrect statements come out of a teacher's mouth about their subject.
C can't do as much as
C++ is capable of because it's not
object-oriented? So how does a
proccesor's function-oriented
instruction set even cope with
objects? Your problem is that your don't understand the low level aspects of the computer, or even your own beloved C++ objects for that matter. Take some time to learn the language. Generic teaching skills will not get you through.