The thing about teaching a class is that it can’t actually be done. You can only teach an individual.
I’ve been teaching since I was in middle school. Hard to believe, but true. That effort, to teach my younger sister (by six years) how to do addition was an utter failure. My next major outing was to create a one week segment for my 12th grade physics class on black holes, including a test. I believe that one fared better, although I don’t believe my endeavor to expose my classmates to then cutting edge cosmology was necessarily appreciated.
Throughout college, I was a TA and grader for various CS classes. I spent a summer a the Nature and Conservation director at a Boy Scout camp and two summers teaching programming to teens. By the time I entered the professional arena, I knew teaching (tech transfer) was in my DNA.
A decade ago, I worked for a company where teaching C++ was part of the job.
Fast forward to my current position. I’ve had the opportunity to create and present Modern C++ (C++14) training within my company. This has come in two flavors, one to jumpstart them into C++ (C developers) and one to bring them up to speed on the start of the language (C++98/03 developers). Both classes have about 15 hours worth of material.
The first challenge in teaching modern C++ is that of linearization. C++ has a wonderful breadth. Unfortunately, It can be challenging to present the material in such a way as to be both meaningful and at the same time not resort to appeals to Oz-ian “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” My success in this area I attribute to years of exposure to the materials of James Burke.
The second, far more interesting challenge, is hitting that Goldilocks zone where everyone is learning. Even when teaching C++ to C developers, there will be those who immediately take to its conceptual frameworks and there will be those who probably never will. It would be easy to cater to the former and simply write off the later as Luddites. Alternately, one could obsess on the later group and end up boring the former to tears. A fundamental balance can be achieved by using labs which build upon a coherent problem and lead the student to embrace ever more abstract aspects of the language.
In the case of my modern C++ for C++98/03 developers class, I take an entirely different approach. With them I use a progression from changes in the language, to important element of the standard library, to useful Boost bits and finally to the contributions made by the GSL. Within this progression, I give attention to each feature or class using a presentation / discussion format. Unlike the jumpstart class, I can’t use the labs to modulate the pace of the class. Each group I teach will progress at their own pace. (I limit my class size to about 20). In this advanced class, I also find myself researching answers to specific, real-world issues that the students are encountering. I then fold these results back into the materials I present.
As with any modern company, there is a mix of platforms under development. This has necessitated my doing a bit of bounds checking to be sure that the materials I present will work in a Visual C++ / gcc / VxWorks world. With the advanced class, I present not only the modern (C++14) methods (with a bit of C++17 previews), but also the pre-C++11 mechanisms as not everyone has the luxury of constantly upgrading their tool chains.
Overall, it has been an enjoyable experience. One I’m sure I’ll be repeating in the future.
Note: As a nod to an interesting Stanford professor (Mehran Sahami) and in the voice of Starfire, I have taken up the habit of “the throwing of the candy.”
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