I have taken this course in the beginning of 2014 and for it was a truly useful and engaging experience. Before I started it I did some programming with Matlab, Python and had some rudimentary knowledge of C++, yet the exercises of the course did offer me a challenge and forced me to put quite a lot of work to successfully complete them. I recall spending around fifteen hours when struggling with templates or devoting the whole week to completing the last project of the course. Overall, it was truly time-intensive, yet, I believe that in my case it was the time well-spent. In the end I felt way more confident with object-oriented and template programming and I do not think I would be able to get the same proficiency in C++ on my own. Apart from the course content, I would like to particularly stress the importance of the forum. It is so good that I actually did not have to bother my TA at all, as whenever I had a question regarding the content of lectures or exercises I could find an answer there. It is definetely a lifesaver and clearly distinguishes QuantNet's course from any other course in programming I know.