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CppCon 2015: Kate Gregory “Stop Teaching C"

CppCon · talk · Watch on YouTube

C, C++, Rust, Go & systems languagesEducation & learning

What it is

Kate Gregory argues at CppCon 2015 that C++ should be taught without starting from C: no char* strings, printf or raw arrays at first, with references before pointers.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN people cite it constantly in C versus C++ debates as the case for teaching modern C++ idioms rather than C first.

  • 7 people recommended it
  • 7 different months
  • 3 strong recommendations
  • first 2016, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “Not only is she a great presenter, but she makes amazing points about what is fundamentally wrong with how C++ is taught in classrooms around the globe.”

    Argues C++ should not be taught as C with classes.

    autoreleasepool, 2016-01 · Strong recommendation · in “The Landscape of Parallelism in C++ [video]”

  2. “Of special relevance is the rather excellent talk by Kate Gregory”

    Excellent talk on introducing C++ without the C legacy.

    e12e, 2016-05 · Strong recommendation · in “Why I don't spend time with Modern C++ anymore”

  3. “you should definitely listen to her”

    Smart talk by a C++ teacher against starting with C.

    tialaramex, 2022-04 · Strong recommendation · in “C++20 Ranges Algorithms – Non-Modifying Operations”

  4. “For Modern C++ I found this video interesting in regards to the topics she chooses to teach people new to C++.”

    Talk on what topics to teach newcomers to modern C++.

    daemin, 2016-01 · Recommendation · in “} // good to go”

  5. “talk at CppCon 2015 explains better than me.”

    Explains why to learn C++ idioms rather than C.

    pjmlp, 2017-05 · Recommendation · in “Coroutines are now in Clang trunk, libc++”

  6. “good talk about how we should”

    Good talk on why C should not be taught before C++.

    simias, 2018-10 · Recommendation · in “Teaching C (2016)”

  7. “Kate Gregory has a good cppcon talk on the topic”

    Good talk arguing that C should no longer be taught.

    tediousdemise, 2021-04 · Recommendation · in “A simple C implementation to stream H.264 to browser using WebRTC”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: c++, modern c++, pedagogy, cppcon, kate gregory

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