Please, PLEASE, PUH-LEEEEZE....

Post #43,191 by jb4 6/22/02 11:08:58 AM Reply	Please, PLEASE, PUH-LEEEEZE.... ...don't teach MFuckingC! If you really want to subvert young minds, teach them the STL instead. Anything you can do with MFC you can do easier, cleaner, and with fewer memory leaks with the STL. Tom, I know you're a clever guy...I'm sure you can fill your class full of "Well, MFC does it this way, but if you want it to work really well, try this little STL trick instead!..." kind of stuff.... jb4 "I remember Harry S. Truman's sign on his desk. 'The buck stops here.' Strange how those words, while still true, mean something completely different today." -- Brandioch
Post #43,199 by altmann 6/22/02 2:34:49 PM Reply	Um.... Isn't MFC a mostly a GUI framework, of which container classes are a small part? -- Chris Altmann
Post #43,204 by hnick 6/22/02 3:38:11 PM Reply	That would be correct... Doesn't mean that he can't push the portable elements of STL though. Learning ONLY the Frustration class containers is detrimental to one's learning...
Post #43,314 by jb4 6/24/02 12:22:13 PM Reply	Well... ...it's actually a thin, thin, 16mm shell around the Windoze API, with some container things (I wouldn't dignify them by calling them "objects") thrown in for good (?) measure. All neatly packaged up and called an "obejct framework" by marketing droids who (along with their engineering counterparts) wouldn't know an object if it came up and (rightly) kicked any of them squarely in the ass. Yes it does, of course, wrap the GUI aspects of Windoze. It claims to do so much more, however, and while there isn't a dime's worth of difference between using the MFC or the raw API counterparts (except the API doesn leak resources nearly as much) for graphics, there is a real need for containers in Windowz, so teaching the STL can generate a real transfer of knowledge. jb4 "I remember Harry S. Truman's sign on his desk. 'The buck stops here.' Strange how those words, while still true, mean something completely different today." -- Brandioch
Post #43,214 by tjsinclair 6/22/02 7:15:15 PM Reply	Understood However, they get STL in Intermediate Programming (which I'm teaching this term using Linux and Kdevelop). The "Advanced Programming" will be mainly GUI stuff as they'll have had two terms of an ANSI C++ foundation. I push back pretty hard on teaching industry standards rather than vendors and my boss agrees with me so I (usually) get to do things my way. (Besides, she loves the fact I saved her $70K on her network infrastructure budget by using existing hardware, Solaris and Linux instead of the Win2K boxes that all the other campuses are setting up. She loves VNC, too...) Tom Sinclair "Subverting Young Minds Since 03/13/2000"

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