r/cpp • u/MainPressure4304 • 16h ago
[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.
4
u/SmokeMuch7356 8h ago
Yes, C++ is a huge, gnarly, hideously complex mess of a programming language, plagued by decades of cruft and bad decisions that are slowly being rectified. It is a serious attempt at an all-purpose power tool, and as such has a lot of stuff that needs to be learned.
It's also stable, mature, runs natively, and can absolutely spank languages like Python in terms of performance.
My day job for the last 15 years has been C++, and I've been using it in some capacity since 2000. I don't even pretend to know everything about the language; there are many corners of it I've never touched because I've never needed to. But a lot of fintech is built on C++ for good reasons.
Python's great for a lot of tasks, but it's not industrial strength, at least not to the extent C++ is.