I know someone who is doing this course. I can understand both the desire to do this course (get a deeper understanding of the C++11 spec) and why this is the c

I know someone who is doing this course. I can understand both the desire to do this course (get a deeper understanding of the C++11 spec) and why this is the course matter (building a compiler will give you a deeper understanding of the spec). Still, as others have noted, C++ is a daunting spec, probably the most complicated of any language. Perhaps they resolved this with C++11 but previous versions of C++ were also ambiguous in certain corner cases [1]. What I don't really understand is why you can't publish your code before or after. I guess I understand why: they want to offer this in later years without prepackaged solutions being on github but is that really avoidable? So you have to invest a massive amount of effort into building this. Sure you get some technical knowledge but you don't get any code you can really use at the end. All of this makes me appreciate the relative simplicity of the grammars of, say, Go or Lisp. I see the need for C++ but I can't help but view is as a hideous Frankenstein of a language nonetheless. [1] http://www.computing.surrey.ac.uk/research/dsrg/fog/FogThesis.pdf http://www.computing.surrey.ac.uk/research/dsrg/fog/FogThesi... p148