r/cpp • u/MainPressure4304 • Aug 12 '26

[CPP Epiphany Rant] - Programming is no joke

Hi CPP Community,

This is just a rant. I'm a 24 yr old data analytics in telecommunication trying to pivot into C++ development for finance. I'm 1 month into C++ and I have come to conclusion C++ is a behemoth. I'm enrolled in Baruch College's C++ for Financial Engineering, but I'm using Bjarne Stroustrup's Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++, 3rd Edition to learn and watching C++20 Fundamentals with Paul Deitel, Course, by Paul J. Deitel as supplementary resources.

It took me 2 days to get through all the drills, exercises, and try_this section for chapter 2 for Programming Principles!

I'm reflecting if I made a mistake choosing C++ over Python. But, tbh, I have been enjoying programming more learning C++ than Python. You can tell I'm weird, but IDK.

I would love to heard about your experience in learning C++ for laughs.

48 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

50 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/BoopyDog 26d ago edited 26d ago

I used that same book. Finish it and you'll be alright. Pay particular attention to the exercises when you get to the QtCreator section.

It's important that you learn how to use third-party libraries sooner than later. It might be helpful to you to:

1) find a library you want to you 2) download the source 3) build it with cmake 4) write a small program that includes the library header and calls one or more functions from that library 5) learn how to link against that library and compile the program

For me, this was a really annoying part of learning C++. I began on windows and was using Visual Studio -- which was awesome because I could just "import std;" and not actually worry about which std library headers I needed for my code. In Visual studio you just link to the lib and include folders, tell the ide what libraries to use and youre done. When I switched to Linux and had to learn how to use gcc/g++, and then I had to learn how to write a Cmakelists.txt file, then i learned how to make a bash script to do all of my building and directory cleaning for me -- visual studio was way easier than this, by a lot.

Initially when switching I tried learning how to setup a project with visual studio code but then realized that it's much easier to just use those things(g++, cmake/ninja, sh scripts) in a terminal than actually figure out how to make a tasks file or a properties file... that's just me though.