The C++ Programming Language

C++ is widely used in financial systems, for game development, and for scientific computation.

For high-level applications programming to be effective and convenient, we need libraries. Using just the bare language features makes almost all programming quite painful. That’s true for every general-purpose language. Conversely, given suitable libraries just about any programming task can be pleasant.

No language is ideal for every application and every programmer.

Please don’t look at an individual language feature as a solution, but as one building brick from a varied set which can be combined to express solutions.

if the standard library provides a component that addresses a problem, it is almost always better to use that component than to build your own.

An understanding of every language-technical detail of a language feature or library component is neither necessary nor sufficient for writing good programs. In fact, an obsession with understanding ev ery little detail is a prescription for awful – overelaborate and overly clever – code. What is needed is an understanding of design and programming techniques together with an appreciation of application domains.

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.

A programmer can partition an application into manageable pieces by defining new types that closely match the concepts of the application. This technique for program construction is often called data abstraction.

The key concept in C++ is class. A class is a user-defined type.

Programming is understanding.

The standard library itself is also a fertile source of programming examples and design techniques.

Only a good understanding of the ideas behind the language facilities leads to mastery.