>> Oh, I have a far bigger "problem" than that: C is the number one 
>> language requested in job adverts. :-(
> 
> So anyone interested in programming jobs might think it's a good idea to 
> at least learn the basics...
> 
> BTW, at University there were *very* few people who failed to write C++ 
> programs by the end of the course (and this was an Engineering course 
> don't forget).  I really find it impossible to believe that you couldn't 
> learn the basics of C++ from a book or decent web tutorial.

And when I was at college, we actually did a semester of C. I submitted 
a C program, which did actually do what it was intended to do. It took 
me an awefully long time to get it to work though. I was constantly 
tripped over by various things. You know, the usual:

- printf() exists.

- I keep having to look up the syntax for defining new data structures.

- C doesn't seem to distinguish between Booleans, integers, pointers and 
arrays.

- The whole issue of pointer syntax is just confusing.

- Splitting a program into more than one source file opens up a whole 
new world of pain. (Especially if you don't have the benefit of automake.)

I guess the basic problem is C's insistence on allowing you to do 
absolutely anything, no matter how stupid, and providing no help 
whatsoever in finding your mistakes. Couple that with a cryptic syntax 
where it's worryingly easy to say something completely different from 
what you actually meant and it's not the easiest of languages to use.

Fortunately, for my assignment, I merely had to write a program to "do 
graphics". (That was more or less the assignment brief. Do something 
that has graphics in it. Open-ended, much?) Fortunately, this doesn't 
involve very much sophisticated programming, just lots of algebra. I can 
just about handle that.

Still, writing code in C is the easy part. Unfortunately, as soon as you 
try to read somebody else's, you quickly realise that regular C 
programmers think it's A-OK to do random crazy stuff like using 
assignments as expressions or writing while-statements where the 
conditional test does all the work and the loop body is empty. (My 
particular favourit is performing pointer dereference, assignment, and 
incriment in a single statement... Probably very efficient at the 
machine level, but utterly opaque to read.)

As for C++... well that might be a little easier. Although the tutorial 
I was following explains things in a rather random-seeming order. (You'd 
think knowing how to write a class would be a higher priority than 
understanding const references, but hey...) It still has the basic 
problem of being a language that makes no attempt to stop you doing dumb 
things, and overly opaque syntax.

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