four years ago I was in Mountain View, California, interviewing for a position with Google.It was an odd sort of interview.  Lots of puzzles, math-like challenges, and code.  Lots, and lots, and lots of code.What struck me at Google wasn’t the challenges.  Nor was it the office environment, the cafeteria, or the mini-swimming pool, all of which were impressive.No, what struck me were the people.All of the people I met — and I mean all of them — had this sort of early-twenties look to them.  Like the characters in Microserfs, these were “firsteesâ...

In this interview, co-author of Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, 5th Edition Rogers Cadenhead discusses moving from Java to C++, what brought him to C++, and the best tactics for learning C++.Danny Kalev: For how long were you a Java programmer? Can you tell us a bit about the nature of the projects in which you took part at that time?Rogers Cadenhead: I've been a Java programmer since the language was launched by Sun Microsystems in 1995. I was doing website development, and Java applets were the first available platform for creating interactive programs that ran ...