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> what the fuck cout<<x actually does I'm not sure where that conversation would go. It prints to stdout. Would the student say the same thing about printf("%d

> what the fuck cout<<x actually does I'm not sure where that conversation would go. It prints to stdout. Would the student say the same thing about printf("%d", x)? How far down the rabbit hole did he want to go? Stream insertion syntax os pretty bad, though, I'll agree with that. Especially when you want to print floating point.

gravypod 10y ago
The conversation then shifts to how it does this? What if I want to print to something else? Why if I want to read differently from a stream? When you provide a shorthand that's all well and good but when you TEACH a short hand it's what's ONLY used by the students. The students will assume there is no other way to read and write then using >> and << which is horribly incorrect. These are largely inadequate measures for reading and writing in my experience as you probably want to do formatting which printf just does better. So many of the students in my CS class this semester can't do the first lab, which in all essence, is a tokenizer because they don't know that there are other ways for writing to, or reading from, a stream! A short hand should only be used in a majority if it can do everything the long hand way can do. Also for anyone interested what my first C++ project looked like you can see here: https://web.njit.edu/~gwryan/CS280/CS280-Program-1-Fall-2016-R1.pdf https://web.njit.edu/~gwryan/CS280/CS280-Program-1-Fall-2016... https://git.gravypod.com/gravypod/school/tree/master/cs280/homework/program_1 https://git.gravypod.com/gravypod/school/tree/master/cs280/h... It's not my best work, but if any C++ people want to notify me of things I'm doing that's wrong I'm more then happy to learn.
- sseagull 10y ago
  I will agree with the point that the other methods of reading/writing from streams aren't taught early enough, and that formatted output is pretty bad with streams. I've actually written a wrapper around snprintf for printing in c++ (I should put that on github sometime) Your project looks good. Two minor observations: 1.) You have 'using' statements in a header file. This is fine for a small project, but is considered bad form in larger projects (every file that includes that header will end up including the 'using' statements. This can cause collisions in large projects). 2.) Const correctness is a good habit to get into. (Ie, only pass non-const references if you are actually changing the object in the function)
  - gravypod 10y ago
    I wasn't sure how const worked in this language so I decided not to mess with it yet. Coming from Java I have a blanket policy that every variable is final unless needed to be modified. I've run into those pain points. Your first observation is one I have some into as well but I haven't been taught how to do this. For example if my header file needs to define the method: void test(std::string something); Is it bad form to them define the header in my cpp file as such? void test(string something); Isn't that also bad form? Coming from C some things like this could be done but very much shouldn't have been done. I know for a fact that namespacing is one of the hugest benifits to large projects I just don't know how to use the tools provided by C++ to do it correctly. Java? Yea I can get anything you want nice and tucked away. But C++ with the way headers and namespacing works its difficult to obviously see what I want to do and how to get it done. Any examples?
    - jonstewart 10y ago
      I'm not sure I understand the question completely. Do you mean "declare" instead of "define" in "if my header file needs to define the method"? Or are you asking about declaring the parameter to test as "std::string" in the header but then only as "string" in the .cpp definition, because of the presence of a using statement?

gravypod 10y ago

The conversation then shifts to how it does this? What if I want to print to something else? Why if I want to read differently from a stream? When you provide a shorthand that's all well and good but when you TEACH a short hand it's what's ONLY used by the students. The students will assume there is no other way to read and write then using >> and << which is horribly incorrect. These are largely inadequate measures for reading and writing in my experience as you probably want to do formatting which printf just does better. So many of the students in my CS class this semester can't do the first lab, which in all essence, is a tokenizer because they don't know that there are other ways for writing to, or reading from, a stream! A short hand should only be used in a majority if it can do everything the long hand way can do. Also for anyone interested what my first C++ project looked like you can see here: https://web.njit.edu/~gwryan/CS280/CS280-Program-1-Fall-2016-R1.pdf https://web.njit.edu/~gwryan/CS280/CS280-Program-1-Fall-2016... https://git.gravypod.com/gravypod/school/tree/master/cs280/homework/program_1 https://git.gravypod.com/gravypod/school/tree/master/cs280/h... It's not my best work, but if any C++ people want to notify me of things I'm doing that's wrong I'm more then happy to learn.

sseagull 10y ago
I will agree with the point that the other methods of reading/writing from streams aren't taught early enough, and that formatted output is pretty bad with streams. I've actually written a wrapper around snprintf for printing in c++ (I should put that on github sometime) Your project looks good. Two minor observations: 1.) You have 'using' statements in a header file. This is fine for a small project, but is considered bad form in larger projects (every file that includes that header will end up including the 'using' statements. This can cause collisions in large projects). 2.) Const correctness is a good habit to get into. (Ie, only pass non-const references if you are actually changing the object in the function)
- gravypod 10y ago
  I wasn't sure how const worked in this language so I decided not to mess with it yet. Coming from Java I have a blanket policy that every variable is final unless needed to be modified. I've run into those pain points. Your first observation is one I have some into as well but I haven't been taught how to do this. For example if my header file needs to define the method: void test(std::string something); Is it bad form to them define the header in my cpp file as such? void test(string something); Isn't that also bad form? Coming from C some things like this could be done but very much shouldn't have been done. I know for a fact that namespacing is one of the hugest benifits to large projects I just don't know how to use the tools provided by C++ to do it correctly. Java? Yea I can get anything you want nice and tucked away. But C++ with the way headers and namespacing works its difficult to obviously see what I want to do and how to get it done. Any examples?
  - jonstewart 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand the question completely. Do you mean "declare" instead of "define" in "if my header file needs to define the method"? Or are you asking about declaring the parameter to test as "std::string" in the header but then only as "string" in the .cpp definition, because of the presence of a using statement?