it's like having a debate with the iraqi information minister, you don't even believe yourself what you are saying.
C# and D are sufficiently different, D and C# will not compile most/any C programs.
as soon as any of your students got in to a professional context and have to use C++ in anger, they found out pretty quickly that they actually didn't understand it. you did them a disservice by ignoring C.
the design decisions in C++ are reactions to C - not computer hardware, architecture or assembly. there are a few exceptions to this, but they are small in number.
the "why" is staring you in the face and you are willingly ignoring it. it's actually infuriating to try and learn from someone with this attitude, never explaining why correctly but giving directions with no explanation or falsified explanation.
A struct is a C++ data type that offers the same set of features as a class, just with a public access as default.
The use cases for a struct are POD (Plain Old Data) used to aggregate variables that refer to a common data structure, hence struct as abbreviation.
> C# and D are sufficiently different, D and C# will not compile most/any C programs.
But they also have struct. So you don't need to explain struct to those developers?
You can also do memcopy and pointer manipulations in C# and D.
Why shouldn't then they also learn about C?
Regarding the C subset in C++, it is actually C89 with a few semantic changes.
There quite a few examples of C89 compliant code that won't compile with a C++ compiler or will have strange behaviors.
The way struct namespaces work is such example.
> A struct is a C++ data type that offers the same set of features as a class, just with a public access as default.
these are lies. at this point it's a semantic argument, what you mean by "understand" is "use". what i mean by understand is its dictionary meaning.
to answer your questions, no you don't need to explain them or teach C to them because the syntax for struct in those languages is not identical to C. that is why. because they are not C structs. "C++ structs" are C structs with some syntatic sugar applied. C structs will not compile in those languages. C structs are not valid code in those languages.
I am aware of the long list of minor incompatibilities between C89 and C++, and how C++11 has removed some and added more
In short you know nothing about this I don't already know and you are quite happy to knowingly deceive your students. i object but there's no point in debating with you further.
This only works if struct_type is a POD.
Meaning no member functions, no virtual functions and no inheritance.
> What exactly do you mean by the first statement? You mean you never taught people the difference?
No, why should I, it is all C++.
It might be called struct, but only the keyword is the same, the semantics are quite different.
So why bother students heads with needless details how a C compiler sees a struct and a C++ sees a struct?
A struct is a class with default public access, that is all.
> You can't properly explain the existence of the struct data type without C, this is nothing to do with FORTRAN.
Why? It is a C++ data type. Why should I use another programming language to explain it?
> If you do not understand C, you cannot understand C++.
I wonder how my students could manage their exams.
You have to learn C++ relation to computer hardware and the design decisions behind it.
This means computer architecture and Assembly, C is not required.
Sure one can explain that some decisions are related to the desire to have C++ interoperate with zero attrition in the C Eco-system, but that isn't required to explain C++ language features.
Do you also want people to learn C before C# and D?
Keywords and programming concepts are common across programming languages.