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Ignore the Myths About C++ And Read This
Online book from C++ expert Andrey Karpov aims to explain away the myths of C++ programming by way of example.
- By Michael Domingo
- 05/26/2016
"C++ is almost never used in the real world."
"C++ isn't a typical language for site development."
"C++ is for large, complicated programs only."
That last myth is from Bjarne Stroustrup, distinguished Danish computer scientist who created the C++ programming language. The first two are ones that have been overheard by Andrey Karpov, a colleague of Kate Gregory, who is Visual Studio Magazine's new resident C++ writer. It was she who alerted me to Karpov and his handy C++ guide chock full of C++ helpfulness.
Whether you're an accomplished developer or starting to understand the ways of C++, Andrey's book, "The Ultimate Question of Programming, Refactoring, and Everything," which is available in full at http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0391/, is a great place to brush up or learn something new.
The book's 42 tips are the culmination of many years of experience (Karpov said he's been programming since he was school age) and building a business from that experience. It's worth noting that he's currently a technical director at Program Verification Systems, which began as a start-up borne out of a need to perform static code analysis while working on open source projects. The work that went into that resulted in Viva64, a tool whose sole aim is to search for errors in 64-bit programs. He said that that tool itself was then "transformed into PVS-Studio static code analyzer for C, C++ and C#."
In explaining his affinity for C++, and thus the compilation of material for his book, Karpov said that he likes "the ability to easily change the level of abstraction. It's great to have the possibility to work with the vector, string, iterators, standard algorithms and so on. But at any moment, if I see that I'm working on a performance-critical spot in the program, I can always go back to good old pointers and write an effective function in the style of C language."
Karpov has been working on the book for some time, but it hasn't gotten the exposure he hoped. We hope this blog post gets him more positive results. Even so, what few comments he's gotten have been incredibly well received for the most part of the "Cool, thanks" variety as well as the "... crazy amount of info in here" variety, but he's looking for more.
If you're inclined, do check out the book and let us know what you think in the comment section here, or send him feedback directly using the link at the top of the books page (the book's Web site doesn't allow commenting for now.)
Here are ten more links I've run across that might be useful to you, in no particular order and definitely not conforming to any particular theme:
Facebook Authentication For ASP.NET MVC Web Application (C# Corner) -- Login and waste some time
MinGW vs Visual C++ on performance? (reddit) -- New laptop means new tool choices
VS Macros are back! (Channel 9) -- Made possible by extensions
Azure continues to be the best place for Software as a Service (Microsoft Azure) -- Cloud is a five-letter word for SaaS
Full-Text Search: PowerShell meet Lucene (Development in a Blink) -- Is it programming, PowerShell, or both?
Microsoft Pushes More Users into the Windows 10 Upgrade Zone (Redmond Magazine) -- We see through Microsoft's tricks
Builder: C# (Ted Neward) -- When it comes to Java's Builder, C# abides
Running Multiple ASP.NET Web API Pipelines Side By Side (StrathWeb) -- Two Web instances sans cross-pipeline conflicts
Microsoft Doesn't Budge on 'Classic' Visual Basic (ADTmag) -- Developers through UserVoice want it, but Microsoft is pretty much ignoring 'em
Mole for Visual Studio Code (site) -- Empowerment through visualization (of data and visual objects
Know of an interesting link, or does your company have a new or updated product or service targeted at Visual Studio developers? Tell me about it at [email protected].
About the Author
Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.