as you guys may know, I'm on my 5th c++ class now. Well, maybe you don't know. But anyway, the absolute worst thing about these classes is the level of dorkiness. Annoying, socially maladjusted people. It's like being surrounded by half a dozen Oxes (Oxen?).

Seriously though, I love programming, but all the stereotypes of dorky computer guys with no social skills has a definite basis in reality. It's sad. Really.

Hahaha, seriously, did you expect anything else? It's hard sometimes to realize that, in people who have similar interests to ours (ok not programming for me but other crap like game design), there is a definite social adjustment problem.

The biggest problem is that they can't do shit (and don't have any other interests) other than what they 'do', ie programming in this case. I try to be eclectic, interest myself for as many things as possible: languages, sports, sociology, biology, history, scientific theory, etc. The only regret I have is that I have never learned to work with my hands, by learning a craft. Ah well. Life's not over yet!

How many 'levels' are there in that certificate anyway Satis? Or is it more like you get at a certain level and from there on get access to a broad range of 'niche' classes?

Well duh, youre not gonna get hot chicks in a c++ class. Just to get an idea... are they all young people? Cos that sometimes makes a difference too.

I know the feeling of not having anyone in the class you can get along with given my experience at uni.

In my case I'm not really chasing any specific degree right now. The classes I've taken are

Introduction to C++ 1 - (basic intro course)
Introduction to C++ 2 - (basically gets more into classes and inheritance)
C++ Game Programming - (this is about writing efficient code and game engines, not graphics)
C++ Windows programming - (current class about writing C++ windows apps)

yea, guess I'm on class #4, not 5, but whatever. There's an intro to c++ 3 that does data structures. I'll probably be taking that in the summer. Then I'll be taking a c++ directx programming class in the fall. Only the three 'intro' classes are part of a degree plan as far as I'm aware... along with a crap load of math.

At any rate, most of the people are relatively young. There's one older guy who won't stfu. First, how can you go to a computer programming class without a laptop? There are people in there taking freakin' notes on pen and paper. The old guy loves to talk to show off how much he knows, but he's a moron that doesn't understand the basics of c++ and inheritance and whatnot... so every class I get to be subject to him blah blah blahing on and on and, quite often, he's totally wrong.

"Oh, so pDR refers to the drawing surface of the dialog."
"No, pDR is the drawing surface of the main windows."
"Oh, so that's derived from the circle class."
"No, when we call the class method, we're passing in a pointer to the main window."
... etc etc.

I wouldn't normally mind, except it's seriously excessive. The class is 2 hrs and 45 minutes long, no breaks or anything, so it gets pretty damned grating. </rant>

Old students are always like that (although some of them do know wtf they're saying). I dunno why, but the older some people get the more they act smug in classes.

Shit not me, I feel like I'm the old one in class. Most of the classes I am taking has people 10 years younger than me in them. So I keep my mouth shut as much as possible because I don't like being the "old" one in the class.

I keep my mouth shut most of the time. Usually any questions I have, someone else will ask. I'll ask questions when I need to, of course, but I don't typically need to. A lot of these people seem to think with their mouth... if they'd taken a second to think, they would've realized they could answer their own question from previously given information.

Oh well, whatever. I'm learning, and that's what matters.

I remember that about old guys too. They would always be the ones asking most questions, all of them being the most stupid ones too and thus making themselves look like idiots. I'm talking about lectures obviously, where imho everyone should just STFU and listen.

Are your classes more like workshops / tutorials?

Steriotypes are steriotypes for a reason!

I really need to get on with webdesign course I paid a million dollah for!

yea, I noticed that, but chose to not say anything. As for the class speed, I usually use extra time to do homework. Unfortunately it's easy to get zoned out and miss when he starts talking about something new. Especially right now... MFC c++ programming isn't hard, per se, but there's a ton of new crap that I'm unfamiliar with.

Lol, I spaz out a lot - but I space out even more! At least it was just an error. The only thing worse than not knowing (or at least, finding out how) to spell are people that purposefully miss out vowels!

Grr, really gets my goat that!