Seeking advice for rookie programming

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by MamaSpoldi

[*]If you already know Java, C++ is the next step in your learning process. I think the biggest mindset change is that C++ is pass by value and Java is pass by reference. This is related to pointers (indirectly) and it basically means that you cannot modify a parameter to a C++ routine unless you pass a pointer to the value.

This is not quite right - java is actually pass-by-value; when passing objects it passes the value of the reference (not the reference itself!). If you reassign a passed parameter in a java subroutine, it will not change anything outside of the subroutine.

(I've heard some object to this by arguing that it is indeed pass-by-reference, but variable assignment in java is best interpreted as name-binding. But this is not how the language specification describes it.)