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Comment by zerr | Hacker News Reader

As a long-time C++ dev, I don't think a video/lectures is a good format for learning it. I'd suggest to read books.

I agreed. Online lectures don't offer exercises (unless you count pop quizes), books do, and they are pretty intense, varying from level to level. For me, C++ Primer is still relavent, but the thickness and difficulty to start reading the book might cast people off.

Anyway, what are the other better books for C++ that is compact, easy to read while keeping a simple structure?

>Online lectures don't offer exercises

The OP wasn't asking about just online lectures, it was asking about MOOCs. The best MOOCs I've taken strike a really good balance between lectures, additional reading, and exercises that are automatically graded.

A lot of books don't have any exercises, and the vast majority of the ones that do have no method of verifying it was done correctly.

So maybe today the best C++ book is better than the best C++ MOOC today, I've no doubt that a MOOC could be designed far better than any book could ever be. And I'd bet that's exactly what the OP was trying to find.

I spent a long time with C++ and my learning was primarily through books. However, I also think that not everyone learns best by reading. Some learn better by listening, some by doing and some by observing others do something. For someone of such disposition, it might be more beneficial to follow a MOOC than to solely study the subject from a book.

I literally just finished reading an article on how the myth of learning styles keeps getting debunked - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth...

And a good article it is. I've never been a great believer in learning styles, but I do know that for me, it's far, far more convenient to watch a video and read a smaller amount of text than to have to solely read a book.

I read text all day. Watching a video is novel and exciting, and I think I tend to pay more attention because of it. But that's just anecdotal. Grinds my gears when people suggest that "books are the best way to learn" any kind of programming language.

Which ?

Can't tell with which one to start, especially for modern C++14/17. But after a couple (or maybe one) of beginner's books, I'd recommend to dive into Bjarne's TC++PL book.

"Effective Modern C++" is extremely well written (https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Modern-Specific-Ways-Improv...)

It cover very smoothly most of the main C++11/14 features, while explaining the pros and cons and the inner choices that has been made when those said feature were implemented

Highly recommended book by the community

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