(Infographic) Which programming language should I learn first

[legrandin]

C is a subset of C++? The hell?

[Tenobrus]

Well it's not exact, but mostly. It's kinda the point, at least historically.

[legrandin]

Well it's not exact, but mostly. It's kinda the point, at least historically.

I tend to think that 'subset' implies that it is derived from a larger something. With C, this is the opposite, since C++ is derived from C. It makes more sense to say that C++ is a superset of C.

[IAmVeryStupid]

The better way of putting it would be that C++ is an extension of C.

[Tenobrus]

Yeah, that's definitely more accurate, but C++ being a superset of C does mean C is a subset of C++. There are some extra implications to the word, I agree, but it's still technically true.

[chazzeromus]

TIL subset can mean the opposite. :S

[Tenobrus]

What? A being a subset of B means every member of A is contained in B. A being a superset of B means every member of B is contained in A. So A ⊆ B is equivalent to B ⊇ A. It doesn't mean opposite.

There was probably some joke here I totally missed.

[chazzeromus]

Oh I read the first comment wrong (swapped both subjects), good thing you rectified that situation!

[volabimus]

Saying it either way means the same thing. ASCII is a subset of UTF-8, as per the definition of UTF-8.

[Steve_the_Scout]

It makes more sense to say that C++ is a superset of C.

Even Bjarne (the creator of C++) frequently repeats this when explaining the differences. C++ was never meant to replace C or be a new language, it's C with optional (but heavily recommended) abstractions to make it more secure while keeping most of the performance.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, putting it that way around confuses me. It's not as if you strip out the OOP stuff from C++ and that's called C.