Taking A Self-Paced Programming Course at University Next Term... C or C ++?

[Totally]

Hi all,

I have no idea if I will end up as a quant or a professor or literally anything. I like to think I have every door there is open for future still - finance, defense, academia, national labs, something else I haven't thought of yet. But next term I am wanting to take a self-paced programming course at my university. I have been using Matlab for like the past 7 years and I definitely consider myself proficient in that to say the least. Recently I have been trying to branch away from Matlab and use Python for my research work to learn a new language.

Next term after summer, the fall term, I want to take a real course here at school for a higher level language... be it C or C++.

I see that C++ seems to be more talked about here and more applicable to the quantitative finance world? So why would I want to take a course in C isntead? Well I used C for my undergrad research. And while I would not consider myself proficient in C and I haven't touched it in years, I would imagine picking up C again will be more intuitive than starting from scratch with C++.

Curious what you guys think... should I stick with C or try C++ for a self paced programming course?

Thanks for the thoughts.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

What's the difference between C and C++?

 

[Totally]

The major difference between C and C++ is that C is a procedural programming language and does not support classes and objects, while C++ is a combination of both procedural and object oriented programming language; therefore C++ can be called a hybrid language.

So in otherwords C++ does stuff that C doesn't.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

C++ is an object-oriented. It supports templates.

And C++11 is a new ball game.

C is still popular in embedded, highly technical applications. In my QN C++ course the first 2 modules are C. Then we move to C++.

Quants tend to C++.

A lot of stuff in C is old/deprecated/not used in C++ mainstream. But C is still an amazing language, nonetheless.

TIOBE Index | TIOBE - The Software Quality Company

 

[Totally]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. That supports what I have seen about C++ being more mainstream. I even went so far as too look at job listings and a lot of them say C++ and fewer if any said C. That being said, I think perhaps starting with C and moving to C++ later might be the best path forward given the fact that I've at least seen C before. I also have 'The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Richie sitting on my desk.

I can do this self paced course for C one term and C++ the next if I wanted to do so. Obviously I wouldn't be an expert in the languages but at least familiar. Sorry I'm going to pick your ear for a sec. Do the jobs in quantitative finance all want people with extreme knowledge of the programming language? Or is basic familiarity fine for starting?

 

[bigbadwolf]

DD will say that C++11 is a completely different beast to C, and he will be right. But for your purposes, think of C++ as C with classes. That's how it started. So C, and then learn how to use classes. Then the things in C++11.

The "extreme knowledge" part always troubles me. No context. Extreme knowledge to do what? Develop the C++ expertise with regard to areas like numerical methods and/or finance. This motivates the learning of C++ and shows you can do something with it.

 

[Totally]

Fair point.

I think what I meant is like, do they expect someone who is straight out of school to have used C++ programming for years and be able to sit down and write a program, syntax all correct, without any sort of internet aide and all be memorized? Like even with matlab which I have been using for 7 years, I still google syntax here and there and how to do something that I don't know how to do.

I think it's settled. I am going to start by re-learning C. That would be more comfortable anyways I think. I can always take the course again for C++ if I so desire.