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I've only written patches of C++ in a couple of tiny projects, and something I've had trouble with in both cases is trying to figure out the somewhat objectivel

I've only written patches of C++ in a couple of tiny projects, and something I've had trouble with in both cases is trying to figure out the somewhat objectively "right" or "best" way to write it. It's not a language I'm fluent in (the vast majority of my experience has been in Objective-C and Swift) so I find myself spending a good chunk of time doing research trying to figure out what the most widely accepted/correct way to do [insert thing] is in C++. So if what's written here is true, I may be unwittingly baking bad practices into my C++ knowledge as a direct result of trying to accomplish the exact opposite… Which leads me to the question: what is the "right way"? I've seen highly vocal critics of writing C++ as "C with extras", so I assume some middleground is where I need to target?

jackmott 9y ago
lots of people who have produced super high quality, money making software in c++ ignore almost everything advised by stroustrop and other modern c++ advocates. don't worry about it, just aolve your own problems.
quicknir 9y ago
I would read books like Scott Meyers' Effective Modern C++, watch cppcon talks. There's a lot of very high quality C++ content out there these days. Generally there's a lot of emphasis on RAII, clear ownership semantics, leveraging more of the standard library as its grown, using lambdas, avoiding shared mutable state, judicious but not excessive use of inheritance and in particular avoiding implementation inheritane, encapsulation. It's not so much a middle ground in the sense you are thinking. The people I'm talking about don't advocate developers, particularly non expert, going crazy with templates. People do that on their own. Hope that helps.
subwayclub 9y ago
The right way is, to speak in philosophical terms, totally a pragmatic choice. If nothing in C++ is working for you, don't use it. If a really obscure technology is making you go really fast, use it. The one and only thing that muddies this picture is other people. Once you are collaborating on a program(whether on the same team, through end-user code, or through a library or API call) all your tricks, preferences and conventions are subject to other people's inept groping and misunderstanding. And that is where you get into standardized best practices. They are basically guaranteed to not actually be the best practice, but they're the one you can compromise on.

jackmott 9y ago

lots of people who have produced super high quality, money making software in c++ ignore almost everything advised by stroustrop and other modern c++ advocates. don't worry about it, just aolve your own problems.

quicknir 9y ago

I would read books like Scott Meyers' Effective Modern C++, watch cppcon talks. There's a lot of very high quality C++ content out there these days. Generally there's a lot of emphasis on RAII, clear ownership semantics, leveraging more of the standard library as its grown, using lambdas, avoiding shared mutable state, judicious but not excessive use of inheritance and in particular avoiding implementation inheritane, encapsulation. It's not so much a middle ground in the sense you are thinking. The people I'm talking about don't advocate developers, particularly non expert, going crazy with templates. People do that on their own. Hope that helps.

subwayclub 9y ago

The right way is, to speak in philosophical terms, totally a pragmatic choice. If nothing in C++ is working for you, don't use it. If a really obscure technology is making you go really fast, use it. The one and only thing that muddies this picture is other people. Once you are collaborating on a program(whether on the same team, through end-user code, or through a library or API call) all your tricks, preferences and conventions are subject to other people's inept groping and misunderstanding. And that is where you get into standardized best practices. They are basically guaranteed to not actually be the best practice, but they're the one you can compromise on.