Know your libraries -- Arne Mertz

By Mantosh Kumar | Feb 1, 2015 10:21 PM | Tags: basics

Prefer standard library over handcrafted logic/algorithm.

Know your libraries

by Arne Mertz

From the article:

I often see people use handcrafted loops or write weird workarounds for stuff the standard library has already taken care of. This does not only apply for standard library features but also for any other library, like Boost, other third party libraries and the libraries the code belongs to. That is bad for several reasons, and I am going to lay out what I think every developer should be required to do before he writes production code.

Two fundamental implementations for one conceptual object -- Mark Isaacson

By Mark | Jan 31, 2015 12:09 PM | Tags: intermediate basics

From the Modern Maintainable Code blog:

Two fundamental implementations for one conceptual object

by Mark Isaacson

From the article:

This is the third article of a series on code reuse. This article discusses how to select between implementations of an object based on patterns in type information. The article uses std::unique_ptr's deleter as a practical case study.

You can find the previous article of the series here (which discusses the analogous problem as it pertains to functions), and the prelude to the next article, which looks at the same problem with one caveat: designing it so that some, but not all, of the methods will be implemented the same way no matter what types you instantiate the object with, here.

Yes, we must replace it++ with ++it--Andrey Karpov

By Andrey Karpov | Jan 29, 2015 11:18 PM | Tags: performance iterators c++ basics

I decided to find out if there is practical sense in writing ++iterator instead of iterator++ when handling iterators.

Is it reasonable to use the prefix increment operator ++it instead of postfix operator it++ for iterators?

by Andrey Karpov

From the article:

I will always write ++it. I did so before but I did it "just in case". Now I can see how useful it is because I regularly launch debug versions. In general, of course, ++it has a very slight influence on the running time. But if I don't make such small optimizations in different places of the code, it will be too late and the profiler won't help me. Bottlenecks will be spread throughout the code.

To Be or Not to Be (an Iterator) -- Eric Niebler

By Felix Petriconi | Jan 29, 2015 01:03 AM | Tags: intermediate basics

Eric Niebler gives in his recent blog post insights about iterators

To Be or Not To Be (an Iterator)

by Eric Niebler

From the article:

Way back in 1999, when the ink on the first C++ standard was still damp, Herb Sutter posed a GoTW puzzler in the still extant C++ Report (RIP): When Is a Container Not a Container? In that article, Herb described the problems of the now-infamous vector<bool>. According to the standard’s own container requirements, vector<bool> is not a container.

In a nutshell, it’s because vector<bool>‘s iterators claim to be random-access, but they’re not. Random-access iterators, when you dereference them, must return a real reference. They can only do that if the thing they point to really exists somewhere. But the bool that a vector<bool>::iterator points to does not exist anywhere. It’s actually a bit in a packed integer, and dereferencing a vector<bool>‘s iterator returns an object of some type that merely acts like a bool& without actually being a bool&.

A Casting Show -- Arne Metz

By Felix Petriconi | Jan 22, 2015 11:57 PM | Tags: intermediate basics

In this next article Arne Mertz describes different type casts.

A Casting Show

by Arne Mertz

From the article:

In C++ there are two ways of type conversions: implicit and explicit type conversions. The latter are called type casts and they are what this post is about.

Testdriven C++ with Catch

By Meeting C++ | Jan 22, 2015 02:58 AM | Tags: unittest testing intermediate basics

A new video from Meeting C++ 2014:

Testdriven C++ with Catch

by Phil Nash

From the talk description:

C++ has been notorious for being a second class citizen when it comes to test frameworks. There are plenty of them but they tend to be fiddly to set-up and ceremonious to use. Many of them attempt to follow the xUnit template without respect for the language environment they are written for. Catch is an attempt to cut through all of that...

Don’t Try Too Hard! – Exception Handling -- Arne Mertz

By Felix Petriconi | Jan 20, 2015 08:11 AM | Tags: intermediate basics

Arne Mertz describes in his recent article insights about exception handling.

Don’t Try Too Hard! – Exception Handling

by Arne Mertz

From the article:

Among C++ developers there often appears to be a misconception about what it means to deal with code that can throw exceptions. The misconception is that the possibility of exceptions means one has to try and catch often and almost everywhere. I will try to explain why I think that is wrong and where I think try/catch is appropriate and where not.

C++11 library components to make a programming scientist happy

By Meeting C++ | Jan 17, 2015 04:12 AM | Tags: performance meeting c++ efficiency c++11 basics

A new video from Meeting C++ 2014:

C++11 library components to make a programming scientist happy

by Peter Gottschling

From the talk description:

This talk presents a survey over components of the C++11
standard library which facilitate the life of a programming scientist.
It will provide a gentle introduction to the random number generator
and evolve this to a complete application: the stochastic simulation
of share price development.

Operator Overloading -- Arne Mertz

By Felix Petriconi | Jan 16, 2015 01:55 AM | Tags: basics

Arne Mertz describes in a series of articles the principles of operator overloading.

Operator Overloading

Operator Overloading: Common Practice

by Arne Mertz

From the articles:

Operators can be used to make user defined classes act like known types, e.g. like numbers, pointers and iterators. That way they facilitate the usage of those classes. They can also be used to make your objects do whatever you want them to do, for example build structures that save the operations for later evaluation. The latter is especially useful for building embedded DSLs and gives enough subject matter for a whole series of blog posts. [The first] post will cover the former use of operator overloading, i.e. writing operators that behave like “normal” operators.

... In [the second] post I will go into the details and write a bit about each operator and how a straight forward implementation might look if the operator is meant to work similar to built in operators.

C++ in 2015

By Meeting C++ | Jan 15, 2015 07:32 AM | Tags: community c++14 basics

My yearly overview on the things that might come:

C++ in 2015

by Jens Weller

From the article:

The year is still young, so lets have an outlook about what is going to happen in C++ Land in 2015...