Thread: Question for people with C++ programming jobs

The bad news is, it's true, you aren't learning what you need to know.
The good news is, most college grads feel the same way you do.

Can I work for you Daved ?

when I started work, I knew the bare bones of C++. I was aware of STL, vectors, GUI and tchar, but never used them. 7 years later, I wouldn't even contemplate writing any production code in C++ without the STL (and boost for that matter). GUI skill's are useful, but these days you're far more likely to write a GUI in C# or java, rather than C++. Most C++ programming these days is at a systems level. Never used tchar, but it wouldn't be a problem if I had to.

An employer isn't really looking to see that you're a C++ guru. You'll pick all this stuff up as you go along.

Sit down, this will be hard to take. Your degree, once you get your first job, is pretty much worthless. Don't get me wrong, you need it to get your first job, but after that it's pretty much a formality. A degree simply states to your employer that you have the ability to learn, and you'll learn more in the first 6 months as a professional coder than in 4 years of college.

All that aside, if I was interviewing a candidate for a C++ graduate position, I would expect them to know about STL and boost, even if they hadn't much experience using them. Happily this is easily rectified. Spend an afternoon reading up on what the STL and boost do and you should be sweet.
(Hint:
stl: containers, iterators and algorithms, find out what these are
boost: there's tonnes of stuff but at the very least look at shared_ptr)

>I've been starting to think that my college is not teaching me what I really need to know.
Fancy that.

>I've never been taught anything on, STL, vectors
That's typical of a C++ course that needs serious modernization.

>GUI, tchar
And how would this be relevant if you get a job doing systems programming? College won't load you up with everything you need to know to be a programmer. In fact, most of what you need will be learned on the job.

>and I'm sure there are other things
So am I. It's impossible to learn everything about C++ in a lifetime, much less 4 years.

>In your jobs do you use these features ofter?
I use a small fraction of the language features, maybe 15%. I use the standard library heavily, and any system APIs or external libraries needed for whatever project I'm working on.

>Is my college preparing me to get a job?
It depends on your expectations. Yes, you're being prepared to get a job, but probably not in the way that you want. College gives you general knowledge, and it's up to your employer to train you properly for the specific job you're hired to do.

Originally Posted by dnysveen

I'm a student getting ready to graduate next year with a CS degree in C++ programming.

Dude, you're giving me impression that you only know C++; that's bad news. (Well, depending where you live.) If you really still have a year a.k.a. 12 months, then it's not too late get involved in some open source project, an internship, etc.

Originally Posted by dnysveen

Can you tell me what I *should* be expect to know for getting a programming job?

non-C++ specific:
algorithms, data structures, comp.sci. basics (binary, 2's complement, etc), boolean logic, turing machines, OO theory (inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, explain why low coupling and high cohesiveness is good)

C++ specific:
c++ object, memory and execution models, program flow control (at the very least understand all looping and conditional language constructs), pointers, functions, classes.

one of the most important skills (in fact nearly THE most important skill) a developer can have is the ability to find out information. There's a reason so many questions are answered with "google it". If I present you with MSDN and ask "how can I configure a serial port to use 38400-8-N-1 under win32?", I don't expect you to know the exact function name, parameters, return values, etc off the top of your head, but I DO expect you to be able to find out sharpish.