http://hckrnews.com/

This is a Python motto for using exception handling instead of testing beforehand if anything you want to do will work.
For example, if you say print(i/j), this will crash if j == 0. You could surround it with: if j != 0: ...
But now, Python tests twice whether j == 0 or not: you wrote an explicit test for it, and Python will test again when evaluating i/j, to see if it needs to throw that ZeroDivisionError into your face. This is a waste of time, and is called "asking for permission".
The Python way is to write:
try:
print(i/j)
except Exception:
print("oops")
So you just go ahead, and bear the consequences if anything goes wrong. This is the "asking for forgiveness" part of the expression. :-)

Eindhoven! 😊

Years ago, I spent a week solving a nasty multithreading bug in some C++ code. Debug build just ran fine, whatever I threw at it. Needless to say, only the Release build crashed randomly. But now, I no longer could debug it 😩
That took a long time of careful reasoning about the code to fix it.

@themissingbrace Just start. You won’t regret it! 😊

@miiitch Thanks. Will do, sound great!

@miiitch Nice! I am going the other way: coming from imperative programming, I am now learning Haskell, from “Haskell from first principles”. Love it. When done, I would like to learn Lisp and Erlang as well.

I am very curious about the Functional mindset.

@miiitch cool! Take your time. It’s a large and complex language. But you can do anything you like, and if done right, with screaming performance.

And I’m totally with you regarding books. I love good books and always try to find the best book for the subject.

I think it depends how comfortable you are with books whether it is the best approach, however. I have been a CS teacher, and have seen that the majority of younger people don’t like books. Maybe at a later stage one will find out the value of a well written, comprehensive book.

You should checkout cppreference.com

Awesome

C++ in a Nutshell is outdated. Loved it though, before C++11 arrived. You definitively need to learn Modern C++. It’s different in many ways.

I still use C++ for low level stuff sometimes.