My first ever big boy language was C++ (after Basic, and Logo, does anyone remember that lol). I was in middle school, tried to self-learn from learncpp.com, only to realize that I had mostly learned C, with cin-cout instead of printf-scanf. So I just decided to migrate to C. Nowadays, I mostly code in Rust, Go, and Python. But my experience with C has been extremely helpful. Can't say the same about C++ though.

[–] LedgeDrop@lemmy.zip 25 points 1 week ago (13 children)

C++ is useful for learning object oriented programming: Describing what really happens in constructors and destructors, the pros/cons of reference counting and how it actually works (using std::unique_ptr)

These are things that most modern languages try to hide/abstract away, but the underlying problems and limitations never go away, but with C++ you'll have a better understanding of why they happen.

However, if you go down the rabbit hole of Template Metaprogramming, I agree with the original post: it takes decades to learn and really only ~~useful~~ exploitable in C++.

[–] YaBoyMax@programming.dev 5 points 1 week ago

I don't disagree that the language is a great way to build an understanding of object lifecycles, but in my experience C++ ctors and dtors are also the biggest source of confusing footguns I've ever encountered in any programming language.

Separately, template metaprogramming is a whole different beast. It's an extremely powerful tool, but to me it also feels like finding the correct incantation to get it to do exactly what you need for more complex scenarios. It can be really fun if you know what you're doing, but it also tends to make me very upset at the compiler when my incantations are a bit off.

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