Deborah R. Fowler
Why C++?
Updated on Nov 3 2013 Update on Jan 7 2018
C++ Institute - Why C++
Very interesting articles: in MSDN Magazine.
Another opinion here
And also I would highlight jRaskell's response on the C++ forum which I wholeheartedly agree with:
"Any good Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Software Engineering program is going to focus more on the fundamental concepts that are language agnostic. Learning the languages themselves is just a matter of learning the specific semantics used by that language. Understanding data structures and the algorithms that work on them, for example, will be universal to any language, (assuming that language provides the basic instruction sets to perform such work).
Whether major universities are teaching their courses in C++ or not is largely irrelevant. If they've determined that the courses are more easily taught in Java, so be it. That is not going to dictate what languages the software industry as a whole will use though.
If you really want to see whether C++ is dead or not, go to monster.com and search for programming related jobs. Let me know how many of them don't require or at least recommend some several years of C/C++ programming experience."
If you do the search on monster.com with the skill "game programming" you will see C++ and OpenGL appear frequently.
You should learn several languages, C++, python etc.
Also - if you are in vsfx look at these listings:
From 1/7/2018 Method Assistant TD
From 8/11/2013 Pixar FX TD description
From 9/2/2013 Pixar Crowds TD description
Looking at a few others on Creative heads on 1/7/2018
- ILMxLab Technical Artist: "Familiarity with C# and C++"
- Luma Pictures Pipeline TD: "C/C++"
- Mr X.
- Houdini FX Artist: "Ability to script in Python and Hscript. C++ and HDK a plus"
- Character FX TD: "MEL, Python and C++ experience"
- Also listed under Rigging TD, Nuke TD
- Weta Digital
- Creature TD: "Python, Perl, and C++ knowledge a plus"
- Creature Puppet Technical Director: "C++"
- Blizzard Entertainment
- Technical Director, Shaders: "Fluent in C++ and Python"
and finally, my personal favorite ... looks like VEX