On Writing a C++ Book | Hacker News Reader

On Writing a C++ Book

lospi.net

126 pointsjalospinoso42 comments

C++ isn't my favourite language but it does have a special place in my heart. It wasn't the first programming language I learnt (that was Visual Basic) but it was the first language I did something serious with that was used by other people.

It has been a few years since I did any C++. I looked into it when C++11 came out and it was very much like a new language with foundations of the old language I both loved and hated. Since then I haven't had a need to use it. However I have a few little side projects I want to work on and C++ would be a fine choice for most of them so perhaps I will sit down sometime and get myself acquainted with the newer standards.

Side note: I was gifted a copy of Professional C++ by Gregoire a few months ago so if anyone reading this has read the 4th edition it would be nice to know if this is a good book to get myself up to speed again or if I should look elsewhere :)

Once you've become familiar with the basics of the language, I highly recommend taking a look at C++ Core Guidelines

https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines

Wow, well done! Will pick this up once Rust in Action is finished.

"It took twice as long to write half of what I proposed. I began writing a projects-based C++ book with a short introduction to the language." Well done for pushing through. It's really easy to become totally discouraged.

is this out? No Starch still shows "early access" and "be ready in September", amazon showed it will be released on September 10, 2019. The TOC looks good to me. I hope it has a sample chapter.

I'd love to see a preview. At 792 pages, this seems rather long for a crash course.

>I’m also beyond elated that it’s getting published

I took that to mean that it is now in the process of being published.

Yes! Going through production/printing rites now. No firm date yet, I'm guessing low numbers of weeks.

I was able to order and download the beta ebook from No Starch this morning by following the link on his site.

Sounds promising.

I used C++ somewhat, almost 20 years ago, before discovering Python, but I never got very good at it. Over the years I wanted to strengthen my C++ skills, but I never found quite the right material or avenue. Most books/tutorials are too basic for me, others already assume a certain familiarity with C or C++. Maybe this book is better...

> C++ has a daunting reputation because its fundamental elements nest so tightly together

Do they? I tend to find that C++’s features are often quite disjoint, which means that you can pick-and-choose which bits you want to use but the language isn’t quite designed like a coherent whole as some other languages are.

Any language that grows big has that problem.

My favourite example is Python, I started using it with version 1.6 and even though I only use it for small scripting tasks, always followed each release since then.

It might appeal to beginners, but underneath lies a language as powerful as C++, where even the most savy will fail to remember what changed between minor releases.

> Any language that grows big has that problem.

I'm also quite sure that we will see similar issues with other languages in the coming decades, with new paradigms becoming popular and existing languages trying to retrofit those in their design. C++ is one of the oldest and biggest (in term of usage) language that is still used for new projects and evolving, the competition is one or two decades younger, they still have plenty of time to evolve into monsters.

Have you ever tried to answer C, Python, Perl, Java, C#, F#, VB.NET, OCaml, Haskell, JavaScript Quiz Pub questions?

Many think that they know what they are using, but never bothered to actually read the language reference manual.

As much as a like python, it is not as powerful as c++. Hence the reason you have to use cython/cpython to improve performance.

Powerful doesn't mean fast. Python is quite slow but C++ is not powerful enough to make so many things usable without -comparatively- a lot of work.

C++ is very fast and entrenched in a few markets ( gamedev, trading, etc) but that's it. As a language it is quite average, encumbered by too many features, too many corner cases.

I was speaking about grammar and language semantics, not implementation.

Unfortunately you can't feature-flag them off, and especially you can't automatically ban people from using all sorts of old unsafe constructs in your language, so for practical multi-contributor projects you have to be aware of all the features.

It's not a coherent language because there are so many different compilers in use today.

Many more modern Languages like Java, Python, Rust and Go have practically only one compiler/reference implementation and a couple of much less popular ones.

If we're talking about the language, we're talking about the standard, of which there is only one. Having many different compilers (and legacy code!) can indeed render the process of standardization hard (but needed), and legacy code can cause certain features not to be deprecated, but having several compilers do not render the language coherent or not.

Hm, with "the language" I meant "as used". And standard-compliance does vary somewhat. On top of the compilers, there different sub-populations of programmers, being trained on different standards, different libraries, different sets of features.

I'm not a proficient C++ programmer, but it appeared to me that there aren't that many programmers who know or even use the complete standard?

Interesting that the author didn't include C++ Primer in his list of favorites. It's not perfect, but I think its latest edition (C++11) is a pretty good way to learn C++ currently.

Do you mean A Tour of C++? That's an excellent introduction by Bjarne himself, but does not talk about some things such as the Boost library.

A tour of C++, by B. Stroustrup. Short (~250pages) and accessible introduction to the language and libraries. The second edition has been updated for C++17 and some parts of C++20.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Tour-2nd-Depth-Bjarne-Stroustrup/dp/0...

C++ Primer, by Stanley B. Lippman, Josée Lajoie, and arbara E. Moo. Really huge book, 970+ pages. Covers almost everything from the language, updated for C++11. I wouldn't use it as a beginner though.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/C-Primer-Stanley-B-Lippman-ebook-dp-B...

The first one is really nice introduction, I picked it up a few months ago to learn the language. Quick read, simple to follow, I really enjoy this book. The second one works as a reference as it goes way more in details and covers a massive amount of stuff!

Primer is a really dry reference. It was too boring for me to read it in order. Too many details on not very fun topics from the beginning.

OP is clearly talking about Stanley B. Lippman's book C++ Primer (Fifth Edition).

Did I miss or there isn't a section that covers modern build systems? I would have loved to get an intro to that.

I was also thinking the same thing after glancing at the table of contents. I remember working with C++ while studying at grad school with instructions by two professors who quite loved the language. Even though I enjoyed the language and its STL very much, the mess of its build system and linking to other libraries is what comes to my mind whenever I think about C++. This is exactly why I never touched it again.

Cargo does a fantastic job for Rust in this regard. Rust won me over.

>Cargo does a fantastic job for Rust in this regard. Rust won me over.

Cargo - that's exactly what I would love to have in C++. Probably there is something that I am just not aware of as I do not do a professional cpp development.

Same here, I would really like to read a good write-up on this topic. I started to write blog articles on CMake a few months ago while learning to use it but never published them as they became way too huge and messy. I would be definitely interested in an equivalent of "A tour of C++" but for modern-ish build systems, by someone with better writing skills than I have :-)

What does that have to do with C++?

Isn't that obvious? Those who do serious C++ development typically need a good build system.

As a dabbler in hardware and edge deployed machine learning models, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

Which version of the C++ standard is this book targeting? Also, any links to reviews?

What would be the modern (14/17/20) C++ as the first language book nowadays?

Everyone has a different path, but frankly, I wouldn't recommend C++ as a first programming language. It's much easier to comprehend if you have some background in another language.

My three favorite C++ books are C++ Common Knowledge, Modern Effective C++, and Effective C++. Two of those predate C++11, but most of the advice is still applicable.

As for introductory texts, I guess there's: Accelerated C++, C++ Primer, Discovering Modern C++, A Tour of C++, and of course C++ Crash Course (the book under discussion).

I wouldn't get too hung up on "modern" C++. The vast majority of C++ programmers learned the old stuff (the vast majority of which is still valid), then caught up on the new stuff with Effective Modern C++, blog posts, etc. Just as it's useful to know C before you learn C++, it's useful to know old C++ before you learn modern C++.

> Just as it's useful to know C before you learn C++, it's useful to know old C++ before you learn modern C++.

There are definitely varying opinions on this. If you look for C++ courses for beginners they mostly do not start with C these days. I'd be surprised if any courses currently being taught don't start with lots of std library stuff (especially vector, string, map, etc...).

I'm not sure I understand your question, but if you are asking for a first book to learn the language, adapted to modern C++, then "A tour of C++" by Bjarne Stroustrup (initial creator of the language) is a really good one: http://www.stroustrup.com/tour2.html.

It's relatively short (~250 pages) and simple to start with. And the second edition is updated to C++17, and covers a bit of C++20.

You mean, what's a good book for somebody who wants to learn programming with C++ as a language of choice?

I'd vote for "Beginning Game Programming in C++" as a self-study book, and "Programming: Principles and Practices Using C++" if you have somebody more experienced that can help you set your environment.

Who is the author of your recommended "Beginning Game Programming in C++" book...? Sounds interesting.

Oops, I meant "Beginning C++ Through Game Programming" by Michael Dawson. It's a no-nonsense beginner programming text, geared towards people who want to learn C++ in order to make games.

Use python.

Use whatever floats your boat.

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