so step 1 of teaching C++ is "how to compile 101" where the lesson consists entirely of "g++ -wall -werror <file.cpp>" I can't argue with that. I'd also teach

so step 1 of teaching C++ is "how to compile 101" where the lesson consists entirely of "g++ -wall -werror <file.cpp>" I can't argue with that. I'd also teach students right from the start to look at the intermediate files as one of the early steps to understanding compile problems (so with gcc that would be the '-save-temps' option).