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)

Introduction

Throughout Chapter 8, Classes and Structs and Chapter 9, Object-Oriented Principles we covered object-oriented principles in C++. We started by looking at classes and structs, creating our own user-defined objects to encapsulate our members. We then moved on to some basic object-oriented principles.

In this chapter, we're going to tackle some of the more advanced concepts of object-oriented programming (OOP), such as inheritance, virtual member functions, abstract classes, polymorphism, and casting between types. With an understanding of these principles, we can really start making use of the great features that make C++ the versatile and powerful language it is.

We'll start by looking at inheritance, a feature through which we can define common functionality in a single base class, then extend it in unique child classes; this is one of the fundamental concepts in OOP. This will lead us on to looking at virtual member functions. These allow us to define...