One does not simply introduce C++. It's the most insanely hardcore language there is. I wouldn't have stood any chance understanding it had it not been for my gentle introduction with C for several years.
Apparently the first year students at my university didn't had any issue going from Standard Pascal to C++, in the mid-90's.
Proper C++ was taught using our string, vector and collection classes, given that we were still a couple of years away from ISO C++ being fully defined.
C style programming with low level tricks were only introduced later as advanced topics.
Apparently thousands of students managed to get going the remaining 5 years of the degree.
Well there's a reason universities switched to Java when teaching algorithms and containers after the 90's. C++ is a weaker abstraction that encourages the kind of curiosity that's going to cause a student's brain to melt the moment they try to figure out how things work and encounter the sorts of demons the coursework hasn't prepared them to face. If I was going to teach it, I'd start with octal machine codes and work my way up. https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/realmode.html Sort of like if I were to teach TypeScript then I'd start with JavaScript. My approach to native development probably has more in common with web development than it does with modern c++ practices to be honest, and that's something I talk about in one of my famous hacks: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/4577f7fe11e5d8ef0a...
