I think if you want somebody to learn the syntax of C++, and more/less understand some code, then that would work. But many places are using C++ only because s

I think if you want somebody to learn the syntax of C++, and more/less understand some code, then that would work. But many places are using C++ only because something about the problem domain requires it, often performance. Understanding C++ and cpu architectures well enough to write high performance code is a completely different beast than just understanding c++ well enough to write code. Understanding C++ syntax is a long ways from writing C++ that's not full of memory corruptions, as others have mentioned. So it's not just "train somebody in C++", it's "train somebody in C++ and writing memory-safe C++ and writing fast C++".