Overview

Up until the City and Guilds changed their education programmes and decided to rename, re-organise and basically mess about with things, this course book was given out to students taking the Level 3 C&G C++ Programming course.

Until taking this course, I had only ever written software in C, BASIC and FORTRAN (to varied levels of usefullness). Now, I had started to read C++ books and Object Orientated Programming (OOP) books and knew a bit about the language. For instance, I knew that the language had been standardised and something about the header files not ending in .h - beyond that, not very much

It amazed the heck out of me that in 2001 a college could be using something which would not have been out of place in 1996, but should have been consigned to /dev/null in 1998 after the standardisation.

While I have nothing but respect for the lecturer (who I still keep in touch with, go for a coffee with and wotnot), this course is a prime example of three things..

1. The seeming laziness of the author
2. That you cannot just re-write a C course, change a few headers, pay lip service to some OOP concepts and call it a C++ course
3. The facilities for teaching the course were completely inadequate

Teaching the course

The computers didn't always work. The compiler was not standard compliant ( Microsoft Visual C++ vsn 5). The course was biased (in part) to a flavour of the language rather than the real language. The course (if it was to be re-run) would need a re-write to bring things up to date and also need to be planned more accurately

Why I made that last point

As I've said, the book itself was really a C book with some C++ bits slapped in. The problem was that at the start of the course, you were given the book and really speaking, unless you have a problem, you just got on with it. By the end of the first 3 hour period, I'd covered the first 24 pages and was ready to take the level 3 exams after 5 weeks. 15 hours! No, before you ask I hadn't cheated or anything like that and I'm definately no genius. The course contained so much C that I could do it in my sleep!

The re-write would be required to bring everything up to date. As you will see from page 2 or 3, that the last entry for the C++ timeline is 1992 which gives a bit more than an indication to the amount of attention given to the course materials

On with the show

Well, if you're sure you want to... it's quite desperate. However, if you must, then this link will get you there.

And remember, In cyberspace, no-one can hear your scream....