I have been working with C++ for a few years now and have got good theoretical knowledge on the matter (I think).
However I've been missing involvement in good projects, sort of projects that really gets one going on the technologies.
So I intend to work on my own to get some good grip on C++ and related technologies.
'Have started with a sample projects such as designing and coding a telephone directory.
Please suggest similar projects/problems that test knowledge about C++ , all aspects of the language such as using STL containers/algorithms, polymorphism, as well as designing (design patterns).
Check out this link to test you c/c++ skills and really tough stuff.
http://www.tenouk.com/cpluspluscompetitioncontest.html
Book on Data Structures, Algorithms, And Applications In C++ by Sartaj Sahni
has really challenging problems sets and you will enjoy it.
Project Euler is a large collection of mathematical problems, most of which are most effectively solved by writing small programs.
Doing these will not expose you to the whole technological breadth of C++ but could be part of a self-study program around algorithms, performance, logic and of course mathematics.
Code katas!
Modular progressively more difficult sets of questions that allow a gradual introduction into the more esoteric uses of the language. Various sites have their own question sets.
Parashift C++ FAQs are useful, and so is the C++ idioms wiki - they offer a more overall shaping of design - concentrating on efficiency and correctness.
Related
I like to go through existing software projects as a source of learning and new ideas.
doing so I discover things that I did not think were possible
in your opinion, what is the top state of the art C++ project that you have used/develop/extended? can you state reasons why you consider it state of the art and what you can learn from it.
my latest craze is boost::phoenix, http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_43_0/libs/spirit/phoenix/doc/html/index.html, which is very comprehensive functional programming library.
Despite its capabilities it is straightforward and easy to extend. After some tweaking I was able to write multithreaded lambda parallel loops and mathematical domain specific language, probably within 2 weeks.
What is yours? (please do not just say boost, as it is huge collection of project)
Personally, I like to look at code in Qt. I do use it everyday, but it seems like every day I use it, I find something new. In terms of total code, it is probably as big as boost. But it comes with excellent documentation and examples and complete source code and is free for LPGL & GPL versions.
For me, what I liked about Qt was that it's concepts matched the way C# works, so it was a fairly easy transition back into c++ for me. But by looking at their code, it has really given me many ways (although not as many as SO) to understand some of the complexity in C++
From what I've seen, the code-sources that I have learned the most from have been from fairly complex 3rd party software libraries. Havok is an excellent example from which I've not only learned programming practices and solutions, but also quite a few mathematical and philosophical discussions. I've also seen some other code-sources which have not been open sourced from which I've learned how to not solve things.
Game engines for AAA-titles in general tend to involve a lot of complex code that tries to push as much as possible through a piece of hardware. I guess that the recommendation goes for all software that tries to achieve something similar but I've only dived into game engines when it comes to such software. AAA-titled game engines often have good or bad solutions to study and I would generally recommend looking into those. There are some that are open source... I think Source/Valve have released theirs in different stages.
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Reading the reviews at Amazon and ACCU suggests that John Lakos' book, Large-Scale C++ Software Design may be the Rosetta Stone for modularization.
At the same time, the book seems to be really rare: not many have ever read it, and no pirate electronic copies are floating around.
So, what do you think?
I've read it, and consider it a very useful book on some practical issues with large C++ projects. If you have already read a lot about C++, and know a bit about physical design and its implications, you may not find that much which is terribly "new" in this book.
On the other hand, if your build takes 4 hours, and you don't know how to whittle it down, get a copy, read it, and take it all in.
You'll start writing physically better code quite quickly.
[Edit]
If you want to start somewhere, and can't immediately get a hold of the book, I found the Games From Within series on physical structure useful even after reading Large Scale C++ design.
Interestingly, "More C++ Gems" contains a shortened (to 88(!) pages) version of Lakos' book, which can also be browsed (fully, I believe, as it belongs to the first half of the book) online at Google books.
So, enjoy everyone interested:)
Lakos used to work for Mentor Graphics, who makes EDA software. He was involved in building EDA software in C++, where they wanted to use C++ efficiently ('no more than 5% overhead over C code') and sort out how to build software on early workstations that really would take a long time to compile a large C++ application.
The book is quite a good read - it discusses a wide variety of topics, and Lakos really did know his stuff. He really comes from a background of having to get efficient code out of a C++ compiler, as well as how to set up a C++ program so it is maintainable and compiles and links reasonably quickly.
I think that Lakos has a lot of insight, and I would recommend that you read it. However, it is 'trad' C++ from a time before features like templates were widely available. My copy is not for sale ;^)
I thought the book was a good read back in the late 1990s. It was out of date back then, now about as relevant as telephone book from the 1950s.
I worked with Lakos for several years where he tried to implement these ideas. I also had my modern C++ project I built of about 2000 source files-- large scale enough, and I've built a few more since. Build times are easily reduced by parallel distributed builds, using programs like icecream. Every complier will cache opened headers-- only by doing something really outrageous any modern build tool like scons will scale to thousands of translation units without doing anything really special, with build times, including tests, takes a couple minutes from clean.
Limiting your libraries interface to a few "vocabulary types" (not the same sence as the OO concept, he means just use Int, float, string, char, and a couple of other I don't recall) is extremely poor advice to scale anything. Your build is going to be looking for a type mismatch, you don't want this at runtime just to make it easier to write a make file.
And that's largely the gist of the book-- how do I write C++ in order that it works with tools from 1993? Additionally, the Mentor Graphic project the book describes was a disaster from all accounts. Even the book itself alludes to that.
Large Scale C++ is delivered in source code form-- these are the "physical dependencies," not link libraries (and the book never mentions other more important dependencies like databases, sockets, processor architecture, etc.).
The book is full of ideas that sound good, but there are much better ways to scale up in practice. If you want to study large C++ libraries, take a look at Boost or Xerces and see what they did. They really are implementing large projects, not writing about them.
It's a little out of date (in fact it was out of date when it was written). If I recall correctly, a lot of it was about reducing dependencies which you would probably do now with templates.
Although that's probably one of the lessons to learn on large scale projects, you aren't usually using cutting-edge features and tools.
Is “Large-Scale C++ Software Design” by John Lakos a mind-provoking (but usually overlooked) gem?
Yes.
It is an excellent book and an important one from a historical point of view.
Note that to implement the practices described in the book, you need considerable discipline and agreement within the team. Here are a few things to note:
Lakos has precise definitions for what he calls "components" and "packages". These are key for large scale design. However, they require adherence to conventions for how source and header files are named and the sequence in which they are included. It is a shame that most people (including those who quote Lakos) rarely follow these conventions.
The book is all about C++ but the concepts are more widely applicable. However, because C++ is such a complex language, a large part of the book is teaching you how to use C++ effectively. If you can get past that, you can actually find it useful even if you use other languages.
Some of the prescriptions such as on the use of "name spaces" maybe considered controversial now. Many believe that name spaces should be used in a limited way in C++.
Yes, in some ways, the book is a little dated and some of it is C++ specific. Nonetheless, it offers a lot of useful advice about dealing with complexity and coupling in large programs, and most of his advice applies to any object-oriented language. I also found it very readable.
If you can track down a copy, I'm sure you'll find it worth reading. It's in my top ten list of programming books.
I read it a long time ago, but I remember getting quite a lot from it; though as MadKeithV points out, that may just have been that I knew less then ;)
Certainly from a "how do I reduce how long this takes to build" perspective it's has lots of useful stuff, especially around reducing compile time dependencies, though possibly some of it is no longer relevant, or even possible, given how much templates are used these days.
And no, you can't have my copy either :)
Some background: My job involves maintaining a large multi-threaded multi-process C++ / C# application, and so I'm often tasked with understanding access violations, memory leaks, heap curruption issues and the like.
I quite enjoy this, and I've amassed quite a good understanding of various low level concepts, but the trouble is that I don't program in C++, and aside for the purposes of maintenance I don't really intend to.
What I mean by that is that if I ever need to develop something then at the company I work at the best choice is C# (more developers, other apps also in C# means better interops), so its not that I don't program in C++, it's just that whenever I do program in C++ it will be purely for the purpose of learning C++, and so I want to get the most out of it.
My view is that "Teach yourself C++" books and the like aren't very suitable as they focus too much on getting things done - there are usually many ways of doing things and so they tend to pick one method, so when I'm presented with some code that does things a different way I'm stuffed (e.g. a book teaches MFC, I then get presented with some ATL code and the book hasn't even taught me what ATL and MFC are, let alone how to recognise that what I'm looking at is different!)
I'm really looking for teach yourself C++, with the emphasis on understanding other peoples code.
IMHO C++ in particular is a language that you cannot learn by reading a "teach yourself" book, you really need to have several sources and one of these is actually to look at other people's code.
I would recommend reading Effective C++ and More Effective C++ by Scott Meyers to learn some of the pitfalls when programming in C++, it is a good way to learn especially when you are looking at people's code. Another site than can help is gotw as well, some excellent information is there as well.
Since you'll never be creating C++ programs from scratch, I recommend you narrow your vision and just look at the applications you will be supporting, concentrating on the things you do not fully understand and tackling them one-by-one.
I find http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ to be a good basic resource for C++. When dealing with specific technologies like MFC or ATL, do some research beforehand on which book(s) will suit you best. My favorite method: a strong coffee, a comfy chair and a pile of candidate books at Barnes & Noble to review. Focused on-line searching will suffice as well.
There are no shortcuts to knowledge and mastery, but by limiting your focus you can save yourself some wasted effort. Generally speaking, the more complex the technology--or the more fundamental the design screw up--the more you need to know to fix it. It's the facts of life!
The C++ FAQ is a great source of information.
Despite others' answers, I don't think your problems will lie mainly with the language. Sure, you can look at the standard or Stroustrup, but these will only teach you language constructs.
Most of what you will have trouble learning, I imagine, will be windows-specific and whateverplatformyouareusing-specific.
Do read stroustrup and other language guides, but be prepared to delve into the docs for the libraries and systems you are using.
It sounds like you really need a copy of the C++ standard. (ISO/IEC 14882 - available in draft form for free online. the final version costs a few bucks)
Of course, Stroustrup's book would be a good choice too. But in general, focus on material that describes the language, rather than, as you say, "how to get things done".
If you're having to maintain C++ code that uses MFC and/or ATL to a large degree then the best way to learn how it works so that you are able to properly maintain the code is to write small applications that use MFC and/or ATL so that you get an understanding of hwta is going on when the code is run. Reading a book by Stroustrup will not help you in any way to understand MFC and/or ATL. The other thing you should probably be focusing on is how COM works since ATL is basically a framework of templates, macros, etc that makes using COM easier.
Hope that helps.
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I'm something of a new, reluctant convert to C++ from a Pascal, Ruby, and PHP background. I haven't worked with Pascal since a few months of torture with "Delphi Turbo;" since then I've practically been eating and sleeping Ruby and PHP. I'm already well acquainted with object oriented programming and many various subjects.
My main trouble is that I already know the rudiments of C/C++ programming, less the actual experience of working with C++. I worked with C for long enough to realize that even without macros, etc, I didn't want to work with it. (Some of the disgust was from maintaining a CGI application in C, when accustomed to Pascal's automatic string management.) I know just enough C++ to be dangerous to myself and anyone else unwitting enough to use my "code."
I'd really like to work up to a good enough understanding of C++ to use libraries like Crypto++ and Boost without major problems or in-depth knowledge of the language's intricacies. I just need to figure out how to work with C++ without killing myself (either with C++, or with the long-standing dislike that I'm already battling).
What are effective resources that will teach me C++ without assuming that I must be retaught all basic programming? I'd rather not relearn concepts that I already know, unless the paradigm in C++ is significantly different. I'm also learning on my own time, so don't recommend me a book complex enough to need a guru to explain to me, please! And I have an effective budget of $0 for learning C++, so please keep suggestions to quality online resources or books common enough that I could likely find them at the library.
Read Effective C++ by Scott Meyers - it's a good guide for getting past the basics of C++ and showing how to write and use "correct" C++ code
The C++ FAQ Lite is a great resource.
I highly recommend Stroustrup: The C++ Programming Language (Third Edition). As the author of C++ he is the authority on the language, and the book is useful as a reference as much as it is for learning the language. It's common enough that most good general purpose libraries will have a copy. He goes into quite some depth on all the features of C++, including explanations of why certain design decisions were made in the language. Personally, I think this is the best book around for programmers to learn C++.
Once you have a good grip on core C++, David Abrahams and Aleksey Gurtovoy's book, C++ Template Metaprogramming, goes into further depth and provides many examples of how C++'s template system allows you to perform complex compile-time programming, a highly valuable skill these days. This one is a little less common but you can probably find it at a university library.
I can give you a couple of keywords you might want to research in more detail:
RAII (Is pretty much the technique that ensures you don't have to worry about memory leaks. Very convenient)
Generic Programming (The STL in particular. Experiment with iterators and the standard library algorithms, and see just how powerful these abstractions are. They're a key part of what I like about C++)
Functors (Perhaps too simple on their own, but the way they can be used instead of function pointers with the algorithms mentioned above is interesting)
And just get familiar with templates, and "mild" forms of template metaprogramming. (Traits classes, for example, and (partial) specializations.
And just keep an eye on the C++ questions here on SO. A lot of interesting topics are regularly brought up.
But the best advice is probably to keep it completely separate from C. Forget everything you learned about how to use C. It either doesn't apply in C++, or leads to inferior code that is harder to read and maintain.
It's an interesting language in its own right, and has a number of unique features. Leverage those, and it can actually be fun to work with C++. Treat it as an overengineered Java, PHP or C, and it'll just make you want to throw up.
You need to write code. A lot of code in C++. There is no substitute. You also need to read good code.
I agree with the suggestion for Scott Meyers' books though. Those are pretty good.
Part of your learning will be the leap from procedural programming to OO.
I would highly recommend the book "C++ Common Knowledge" by Stephen C. Dewhurst. Don't know if it's common enough to be found at the library (it's not at mine, but my library sucks for computer books that aren't 5-10 years out of date), but it does an excellent job of taking the complex aspects of C++ and making them easy to understand, without dumbing anything down for beginners. Definitely worth the investment.
To quote from the back of the book:
This book is for you if
You're no "dummy," and you need to get quickly up to speed in intermediate to advanced C++
You've had some experience in C++ programming, but reading intermediate and advanced C++ books is slow-going
You've had an introductory C++ course, but you've found that you still can't follow your colleagues when they're describing their C++ designs and code
You're an experienced C or Java programmer, but you don't yet have the experience to develop nuanced C++ code and designs
You're a C++ expert, and you're looking for an alternative to answering the same questions from your less-experienced colleagues over and over again
C++ Common Knowledge covers essential
but commonly misunderstood topics in
C++ programming and design while
filtering out needless complexity in
the discussion of each topic. What
remains is a clear distillation of the
essentials required for production C++
programming, presented in the author's
trademark incisive, engaging style.
Here is a link to a question with answers that should help you.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1227764/i-need-to-improve-my-c-skills-fast-is-this-realistically-possible/1227805#1227805
For effective stuff you can find online Cplusplus.com has a pretty good reference and information.
If you can find the book "C++ Common Knowledge" (Stephen Dewhurst) at the library or cheaply online, I would add that to the list posted on the StackOverflow link above as well as "The C++ Programming Language" (Stroustrup). Going through the questions under the C++ tag right here on SO should give you some good pointers and code examples to get you on your way.
Here's a list of good C++ books which teach you C++ rather than basics of programming.
Sit down and write some C++ code.
I've studied C++ as a college course. And I have been working on it for last three years. So I kinda have a fairly good idea what is it about. But I believe to know a language is quite different from using it to full potential. My current job doesn't allow me to explore much.
I have seen you guys suggest studying a open source project and perhaps contributing to one too. So my question is, can you suggest one(of both?) to start with that is simple and doesn't overwhelm a starter.
I was in the same situation 12 years ago when I got my first programming job out of college. I didn't do any open source but I managed to gain a lot of practical and advanced C++ knowledge by reading books (the dead tree kind).
In particular, there was an excellent series by Scott Meyers which I feel helped the most in turning me from newbie to professional:
Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
Effective STL: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of the Standard Template Library
The topics in these books range from beginner to advanced. It took me about 2 years working in C++ to understand every chapter in these books, so don't be disheartened if it goes over your head at some point... just try reading it again later :)
If you're willing to climb the very steep learning curve, I would think that you could do worse than studying parts of the boost libraries. I don't think there is another similar body of C++ code out there that is pushing the boundaries of what can be done in C++.
re project selection: you'll want to hack on something that has some relevance to you, otherwise it's just unpaid work. i might suggest eg. Pure, but will you find enough interest?
re advanced code: see Boost
Obviously learning something like this does not happen overnight; You can study existing open-source projects like other posters suggested. However, I have one more suggestion: I suggest joining one of the big IRC c++ channels (for example #c++ on efnet or freenode). Of course most of the questions / discussions going there are basic; however quite often interesting discussions and questions come up. Over the several years I've learned quite a bit just by participating in channel discussions.
My main advice would be that you do not need to stick to C++ to learn technique.. Study Erlang, Lua, and Haskell (lots of others). You will learn so much from these language that you can apply in C++.
Google protocol buffers is a very well written C++ application that sticks to the features of C++ that are proven in the industry -- i.e., they don't go over the top with features that cause headaches for using the code.
In terms of learning to use C++ to its full potential, well the full potential is often hidden. There are very few exceptional C++ programmers, even in the open-source community. So I suggest you read some books. Like the books from Scot Myers and Herb Sutter (all 6 of em).
Boost is an amazing library and has a lot of good code, ranging from simple techniques to very advanced techniques. It definitely touches all of the bleeding edge of C++ idioms. The problem with boost is, it doesn't work well with modern IDE features (code-completion being the main problem), and it has a LOT of symbols :D. It is the place to learn about generic programming and template meta-programming, the former represents the most advanced and immediately-usable idioms, and the latter you can skip for the immediate future.
Apart from the Scott Meyers books DSO has already suggested: Participate on SO and try to answer other people's C++ questions. If you don't know the answer, wait a little until some good answers are posted. You will probably get some idea where the gaps in your knowledge are and you could do some more reading to fill those afterwards.