You're probably much smarter or more dedicated than me if you feel this level can be reached in a much shorter time.
But you can most certainly learn all the basics of writing good C++ code, and interop with great C++ libraries and get real stuff done, in fairly short time. It took me about a month to go from Objective-C to C++ and start publishing iOS apps written almost entirely in C++. And if you don't need that, you can start writing command-line utilities in a few days at most.
Wow, in that case I don't think I've ever worked with anybody who's ever managed to reach "junior level" in any language. What do you call someone with, for example, just a PhD in the relevant field, 6 or 7 years of professional programming experience and several successfully shipped products under his belt. And what do you call the guy that is obviously his junior?
This is nonsense. Perhaps it's true to some degree if you try to "learn" C++ from tutorials of dubious quality rather than from a decent book.
In any case, these rules do not fall under what I'd call "junior-level" C++ programmer as the OP wrote.
This is ludicrous. Depending on your back-ground and the amount of time you spend working in the language each day, a journeyman level competency can be had in just a few months. Honestly this sounds like a comment from someone who has not done much C++. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I guess it can be summed up as: C++ is extremely good at making people think they're writing safe programs.
This feeling of safety is virtually always incorrect in the case of large-scale software, and the huge stream of memory-related vulnerabilities that virtually all popular network-facing C++ applications have and continue to have is proof of this. There is no reasonable way to argue against this; the fraction of popular network-facing C++ software written by a large team that have had memory safety problems rounds up to 100%.
