> What concerns me even more is that it must be pretty much impossible for a beginner to pick up C++ today.
There certainly are issues when learning C++. But I don't think it's impossible. A major concern is the fact that there was never a centralised website collecting good information and filtering out the crap. There never was a central Tutorial or Reference.
All the knowledge is hidden in very expensive books and worst of all there are many publishers simply spitting out piles of bad C++ books.
Stroustrup's book is a great introduction: http://www.stroustrup.com/Programming/ I wish he'd made it freely available. A lot of programming beginners aren't happy to pay $50-$70 for a book when they can go to other languages offering great beginner tutorials for free.
And C++11 is pretty new. So of course there is a transition period with books, articles, references catching on.
There certainly are issues when learning C++. But I don't think it's impossible. A major concern is the fact that there was never a centralised website collecting good information and filtering out the crap. There never was a central Tutorial or Reference.
All the knowledge is hidden in very expensive books and worst of all there are many publishers simply spitting out piles of bad C++ books.
http://isocpp.org/ and http://en.cppreference.com/w/ are a huge improvement.
Stroustrup's book is a great introduction: http://www.stroustrup.com/Programming/ I wish he'd made it freely available. A lot of programming beginners aren't happy to pay $50-$70 for a book when they can go to other languages offering great beginner tutorials for free.
And C++11 is pretty new. So of course there is a transition period with books, articles, references catching on.