Ask HN: Catching Up on C++? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Catching Up on C++?

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Hi folks, up until 2013, I worked as a C++ developer but moved on to web technologies. In the last decade or so, the language and its features have moved on significantly; when I left, C++11 had barely made its way into compilers, so you could say I'm quite behind on the times.

This is probably a stretch, but since I want to get my feet wet in C++ again, is there some resource that could help me catch up on new features and things worth learning? I would love to avoid reading through reams of standards, but if that's it, that's it.

Many thanks in advance.

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Read through https://www.learncpp.com. You'll get a complete refresher on the language, but it will be using modern C++ stuff (modern in this case means C++17).

For C++20 and newer, honestly, the only big feature that I ever use is concepts, although I do also use the new struct initialization syntax[0].

[0]: https://www.cppstories.com/2021/designated-init-cpp20/

Fantastic, thanks for the pointers!

I personally think modules are fantastic. Finally, with modules, C++ catches up to the rest of programming world, and allows you to completely ditch the outdated header/implementation split.

I was quite excited about modules, but apart from MSVC no other compiler seems to think it's important :/.

clang 17 with CMake 3.28 is also quite alright.

I think C++20 coroutines are awesome! They need a bit of getting used to but helps to write very readable code, specially when having to mix C++ with C callbacks.

Just go through this https://github.com/AnthonyCalandra/modern-cpp-features and you should be fine.

If you also like thorough explanations and graphs, there's https://hackingcpp.com/ that could answer many questions you might have.

By the way, just in case, bookmark this online C++ reference https://eel.is/c++draft/ for diving in deep waters.

Good luck!

Tour of C++ 3rd Edition [0] would be a good start.

[0] - https://www.stroustrup.com/tour3.html

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