Just to fine tune my thinking, If a new programmer learnt C++ and then was handed some C code for tidy up, he would probably manage ok ???
As long as they understand the difference between C++ and C, they'll be ok. If they get it wrong though, the compiler will give errors, and they might not understand why. Subtle things like where you can declare variables, which IIRC C++ doesn't really care about, whereas C maintains that you must have the delcaration of all variables before any statement lines in a given program block. I'm not really a C++ coder however, so I won't venture any more points of difference :). Mixing C and C++ code (between objects) can also be a pain in the ass, and a trap for young players.
Of course since no courses seem to be available, it may come down to books and self learning anyway. Both the polytech and uni are sending me course details, but neither course call centre understood a bean of what I asked.
Uni courses aren't aimed at teaching your how to program in a specific language. The COMP209 course James mentioned actually teaches you about OOP, not about C++ or Java. Likewise, the first year courses teach you programming concepts, not specifics about a language. In the past they used C or C++ to teach these, but whether they do or not any more I don't know, and it's likely to change at the drop of a hat any way. The point here is that if you know how to program in a procedural programming language, you should be able to pick up other procedural programming languages fairly easily. Likewise for any paradigm really - an experienced C++ coder moving to Java will find it trivial. Crossing the paradigms are a bit hardware - I've seem some really horrific Java code that would have been not nearly as horrific if it was written in C, simply because of expectations of the language (Java programs should follow OOP guidelines, this basically used a class as a way to call main() which then ran the whole program in a loop. Ick. Slightly more acceptable in C, but still ick :) I can't really speak from experience about Polytech courses, so won't attempt to. They do seem to focus on languages like Delphi however (ObjectPascal is the underlying language in Delphi), which is a different kettle of fish to C++ (Delphi is RAD based, and primarily RAD driven too, although you can do what you like really. ) The biggest problem you'll hit is with the libraries - and this will always be the case in any language. It takes a long time to know the library sets for a language well enough to make use of them comfortably. Python, for example, is a really small language - takes about 10 minutes to learn - but has a huge standard library set to use that I have got nowhere near mastering. BTW, if you want to buy oreilly books, you can get 20% discount as a paid-up LUG member. And you can borrow books from the WLUG library as a paid up LUG member. (yes, that means we could request the orielly C/C++ books for the library ) Daniel