Beautiful C++: 30 Core Guidelines for Writing Clean, Safe, and Fast Code

Paperback

Discover the Beauty of Modern C++

Beautiful C++ presents the C++ Core Guidelines from a developer's point of view with an emphasis on what benefits can be obtained from following the rules and what nightmares can result from ignoring them. For true geeks, it is an easy and entertaining read. For most software developers, it offers something new and useful.
--Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++ and co-editor of the C++ Core Guidelines

Writing great C++ code needn't be difficult. The C++ Core Guidelines can help every C++ developer design and write C++ programs that are exceptionally reliable, efficient, and well-performing. But the Guidelines are so jam-packed with excellent advice that it's hard to know where to start. Start here, with Beautiful C++.

Expert C++ programmers Guy Davidson and Kate Gregory identify 30 Core Guidelines you'll find especially valuable and offer detailed practical knowledge for improving your C++ style. For easy reference, this book is structured to align closely with the official C++ Core Guidelines website.

Throughout, Davidson and Gregory offer useful conceptual insights and expert sample code, illuminate proven ways to use both new and longstanding language features more successfully, and show how to write programs that are more robust and performant by default.

• Avoid bikeshedding: stop wasting valuable time on trivia
• Don't hurt yourself by writing code that will cause problems later
• Know which legacy features to avoid and the modern features to use instead
• Use newer features properly, to get their benefits without creating new problems
• Default to higher-quality code that's statically type-safe, leak resistant, and easier to evolve
• Use the Core Guidelines with any modern C++ version: C++20, C++17, C++14, or C++11

There's something here to improve virtually every program you write, design, or maintain.

For ease of experimentation, all sample code is available on Compiler Explorer at https: //godbolt. org/z/cg30-ch0.0.

Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Author: J. Davidson, Kate Gregory
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Published: 12/16/2021
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.00h x 7.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780137647842

About the Author

Guy Davidson has been programming for 40 years, spending almost the entire time writing games. He is the principal coding manager at Creative Assembly, makers of the Total War game franchise. Since 1999 he has helped the great engineers there become even better engineers. He started contributing to the C++ standard development process in 2015 and is keen to improve the mathematical and HMI facilities of the standard library. Kate Gregory is a founding partner of Gregory Consulting Limited. She has over four decades of software development experience in a variety of programming languages including Fortran, PL/I, C++, Java, Visual Basic, and C#. Her writing career now covers over a dozen books on programming and related topics. She is also a standup instructor, teaching C++ programming and related topics. A number of her courses are available through Pluralsight.