Book Image

The C++ Workshop

By : Dale Green, Kurt Guntheroth, Shaun Ross Mitchell
Book Image

The C++ Workshop

By: Dale Green, Kurt Guntheroth, Shaun Ross Mitchell

Overview of this book

C++ is the backbone of many games, GUI-based applications, and operating systems. Learning C++ effectively is more than a matter of simply reading through theory, as the real challenge is understanding the fundamentals in depth and being able to use them in the real world. If you're looking to learn C++ programming efficiently, this Workshop is a comprehensive guide that covers all the core features of C++ and how to apply them. It will help you take the next big step toward writing efficient, reliable C++ programs. The C++ Workshop begins by explaining the basic structure of a C++ application, showing you how to write and run your first program to understand data types, operators, variables and the flow of control structures. You'll also see how to make smarter decisions when it comes to using storage space by declaring dynamic variables during program runtime. Moving ahead, you'll use object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques such as inheritance, polymorphism, and class hierarchies to make your code structure organized and efficient. Finally, you'll use the C++ standard library?s built-in functions and templates to speed up different programming tasks. By the end of this C++ book, you will have the knowledge and skills to confidently tackle your own ambitious projects and advance your career as a C++ developer.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Summary

Templates are a complex subject, yet through this chapter, we have discovered that this complexity can create amazingly reusable code. The Queue class created here can hold a queue of any elements without any changes to its internals, which is a huge benefit when writing code that needs to be reused in many areas. While not as fully functional, robust, or performant as STL queues, it still gives insight into how a rudimentary version of an STL container can be recreated without too much work, if the STL is unavailable to us or, for some reason, does not suit our needs. We looked at template functions and classes and discovered how powerful they can be when used correctly, along with areas that we might want to be mindful of.

In the next chapter, we are going to cover the STL itself and look closely at the containers it provides. The STL will become invaluable to your future programming efforts in C++. It does a lot of the hard work for us, meaning we will not have to keep...