The Floor is Lava, trying to teach C++
summary
A curriculum emerges from crowdsourced data: 40+ C++ features get classified by Twitter polls and visualized with reveal.js bubbles, showing most beginner-level essentials (unique_ptr, vector, auto, references, sanitizers) are not lava while corner cases cluster as hazardous. Tooling choices surface—pragma once, vcpkg, sanitizers, a preconfigured Pac-Man project and CMake let juniors work in existing repos. Two surprising pain points are std::launder and subsumption, which attract many “show me the answers” votes and low confidence.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:18Defining lava in C++
- 11:58Programming vs C++
- 16:39Community opinions on C++ features
- 22:36Beginner-safe C++ subset
- 26:50Intermediate C++ lava zones
- 29:42Advanced C++ esoteric topics
- 37:17Beginner-safe C++ subset?
- 40:34Key takeaways
- 41:19Q&A: C or Java to C++
- 45:19Q&A: Student exercises
- 48:32Q&A: Static analysis
- 50:42Q&A: Teaching integers
- 51:49Q&A: Warnings and preprocessor
- 53:10Q&A: Living with lava
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