Last August, I signed up for a Fundamentals of Programming class at the local community college (which turned out actually to be “Fundamentals of C++ Using MS C++ 6.0”), in an attempt to extend my skill set and perhaps make me more employable. All I’ve discovered is that I absolutely despise programming (at least, the way this is being taught). Each new assignment is a fresh hell of frustration as I try to make sense of cryptic error messages, inexplicably erratic results, application crashes with runtime errors not documented in the book nor, as far as I can find, on MSDN.
I’m also greatly underwhelmed with the instructor; in my estimation, he skims over far too much material far too quickly and doesn’t explain concepts or usages (and parTICularly mechanics) worth a damn, even when called down in class for not explaining. And the textbook—it’s almost as bad as a calculus text for making logical leaps of two or three steps, expecting the teacher to fill in the missing terms of the progression—which the teacher doesn’t do, leaving to student to flounder through as best he may.
While I may have an A/B average in the class, I haven’t the least confidence that I truly know what I’m doing.
S. Thomas Aquinas shouted at the electrified zoysia. Fnord.
