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

The topic of best practices when defining types in C++ is vast, and we have covered a great deal in this chapter to help you move toward creating classes that are robust and maintainable. We covered encapsulating data by using the private keyword to ensure that we decide how that data is accessed. We looked at getters and setters to give access to data and modify it in a way that can be validated. We also looked at how references can be used to give access to our data and modify it directly, and at how we can return data by value when we only want it to be read or used elsewhere without changing the object's internal data. We found that const can be used to ensure that any member variables we do not wish to be changed can be marked as such, along with member functions.

In the next chapter, we will look at what can be used to ensure that any dynamic objects we create can be properly destroyed using smart pointers. Pointers are a major part of C++ and come with their...