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)

Classes and OOP

Classes are a way to group data and provide the functionality to manipulate that data. A class type is the C++ representation of an object. A class is essentially synonymous with an object. In the previous chapter, the Track class was an archetype of an object of type Track.

Note

The term archetype is a descriptive term to facilitate explanation, and is not an official term.

The word archetype is important to note as it implies the concept of reusability, one of the main benefits of an object-oriented design approach. Once an object has its archetypal foundations, then the specifics can be exposed to manipulation without changing the underlying description. An object built with its own specifics (data) from an archetype (class) is known as an instance of an object or class.

Here is the Track class that was used in the preceding chapter:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
class Track
{
public:
   ...