Book recommendations: Generic programming - c++

* Rune Allnor:
>
> After having lurked here for a few weeks, I wold like to have a go on
> generic programming and templates, etc. The book by Alexandrescu(?)
> is mentined here from time to time, but a quick check om www.amazon.com
> indicates that it is not a very useful book for the hubbyist/beginner
> in
> generic programming.
>
> Does anybody have suggestions for accessible intro texts?

Andrei's book (Modern C++ Design) is an excellent introduction: it
opened the field for the public. It doesn't require much in the way of
familiarity with obscure C++ rules, as that's what it explains wherever
necessary. But it /is/ oriented towards an intelligent reader.

Btw., since you've posted to the group a number of times you haven't
just "lurked". As I understand the term, "lurking" in a group means
reading without contributing.

And also btw., the page linked to in the banner below explains how you
can use a real e-mail address without having that address published on
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Rensselaer Polytechnic -- or wherever (the sky? FFI?) it's located.

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On Mar 13, 4:07 pm, "Rune Allnor" <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
> The book by Alexandrescu(?)
> is mentined here from time to time, but a quick check omwww.amazon.com
> indicates that it is not a very useful book for the hubbyist/beginner
> in
> generic programming.
>
> Does anybody have suggestions for accessible intro texts?

Well, Vandevoorde & Josuttis's book "C++ Templates" covers the
mechanics of templates. If you want to go really basic I always
reccommend Deitel&Deitel's "C++ How to Program".

Hope that helps,

Ivan Novick
http://www.0x4849.net


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In article <1173853724.963619.208560@b75g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, Ivan
Novick <ivan.d.novick> writes
>Well, Vandevoorde & Josuttis's book "C++ Templates" covers the
>mechanics of templates. If you want to go really basic I always
>reccommend Deitel&Deitel's "C++ How to Program".
>
Yes, but I keep hoping you will learn not to. :-) C++ idioms have moved
on a very great deal since those authors laid down the basis for their
book. In addition each new edition is really only a bug-fixed version of
the previous one rather than a complete rewrite (contrast that with 'The
C++ Primer' which was substantially rewritten for the 3rd edition and
completely redone for its 4th edition, in each case a new author was
pulled in who provided a new perspective which made the updating more
complete.)


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On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:22:04 CST, Alf P. Steinbach <alfps@start.no> wrote:
> * Rune Allnor:
>>
>> After having lurked here for a few weeks, I wold like to have a go on
>> generic programming and templates, etc. The book by Alexandrescu(?)
>> is mentined here from time to time, but a quick check om www.amazon.com
>> indicates that it is not a very useful book for the hubbyist/beginner
>> in
>> generic programming.
>>
>> Does anybody have suggestions for accessible intro texts?
>
> Andrei's book (Modern C++ Design) is an excellent introduction: it
> opened the field for the public. It doesn't require much in the way of
> familiarity with obscure C++ rules, as that's what it explains wherever
> necessary. But it /is/ oriented towards an intelligent reader.

I have that one, and also the Abrahams/Gurtovoy book:

%A Andrei Alexandrescu
%T Modern C++ design:
Generic programming and design patterns applied
%S The C++ In-Depth Series
%I Addison-Wesley
%D 2001

%A David Abrahams
%A Aleksey Gurtovoy
%T C++ Template Metaprogramming:
Concepts, Tools, and Techniques
from Boost and Beyond
%S The C++ In-Depth Series
%I Addison-Wesley
%C Boston, MA
%D 2005

Both deal mostly with the implementation of a general-purpose library
though. Maybe I am lazy or unintelligent ... but it seems to me that
there is a use case for templates in everyday, non-library
development. And that neither book covers that explicitly.

For someone like me who hasn't used templates for anything but trivial
tasks, reading these books makes me feel like when I learned BASIC, or
functional programming. It is hard to tell where to start, and what's
possible to do.

I don't know if the above made sense, or if it's even relevant. Maybe
I'm simply asking for a different kind of book, I don't know.

/Jorgen

--
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\X/ snipabacken.dyndns.org> R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

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On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Jorgen Grahn wrote:

> %A Andrei Alexandrescu
> %T Modern C++ design:
> Generic programming and design patterns applied
>
> %A David Abrahams
> %A Aleksey Gurtovoy
> %T C++ Template Metaprogramming:
> Concepts, Tools, and Techniques
> from Boost and Beyond
>
> Both deal mostly with the implementation of a general-purpose library
> though. Maybe I am lazy or unintelligent ... but it seems to me that
> there is a use case for templates in everyday, non-library
> development. And that neither book covers that explicitly.

Trivial templates, yes. Usage of complicated template libraries, yes.

But I do think that complex templates themselves have very little use in
code that isn't a library, or at least is a separate entity consumed by
other code, i.e. could be factored out into a library.

Sebastian Redl

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On Mar 14, 6:25 am, "Ivan Novick" <ivan.d.nov...> wrote:
> On Mar 13, 4:07 pm, "Rune Allnor" <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
>
> > The book by Alexandrescu(?)
> > is mentined here from time to time, but a quick check omwww.amazon.com
> > indicates that it is not a very useful book for the hubbyist/beginner
> > in
> > generic programming.
>
> > Does anybody have suggestions for accessible intro texts?
>
> Well, Vandevoorde & Josuttis's book "C++ Templates" covers the
> mechanics of templates. If you want to go really basic I always
> reccommend Deitel&Deitel's "C++ How to Program".

please, stay away from this book. it's too bloated and the authors
treat the reader as an idiot

Diego


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Diego Martins wrote:

>> Well, Vandevoorde & Josuttis's book "C++ Templates" covers the
>> mechanics of templates. If you want to go really basic I always
>> reccommend Deitel&Deitel's "C++ How to Program".
>
> please, stay away from this book. it's too bloated and the authors
> treat the reader as an idiot

I hope that you are referring to the second book (D&D) here.

--
Gerhard Menzl

Non-spammers may respond to my email address, which is composed of my
full name, separated by a dot, followed by at, followed by "fwz",
followed by a dot, followed by "aero".



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On Mar 15, 12:47 am, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+n...@snipabacken.dyndns.org>
wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:22:04 CST, Alf P. Steinbach <a...@start.no> wrote:

[...]
> Both deal mostly with the implementation of a general-purpose library
> though. Maybe I am lazy or unintelligent ... but it seems to me that
> there is a use case for templates in everyday, non-library
> development.

Probably, but...

I generally find that the higher up the ladder you go (from
basic library to final application), the more you use
inheritance, and the less you use templates. I've not given
much thought to the reasons behind this, but it seems to be true
in my own work.

Also, of course, application level code tends to be considerably
more volatile, and a lot of places tend to limit templates to
only the stablest code, because of the source code coupling they
result in.

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On 14 Mar, 10:22, "Alf P. Steinbach" <a...@start.no> wrote:
> * Rune Allnor:
>
> > After having lurked here for a few weeks, I wold like to have a go on
> > generic programming and templates, etc. The book by Alexandrescu(?)
> > is mentined here from time to time, but a quick check omwww.amazon.com
> > indicates that it is not a very useful book for the hubbyist/beginner
> > in
> > generic programming.
>
> > Does anybody have suggestions for accessible intro texts?
>
> Andrei's book (Modern C++ Design) is an excellent introduction: it
> opened the field for the public. It doesn't require much in the way of
> familiarity with obscure C++ rules, as that's what it explains wherever
> necessary. But it /is/ oriented towards an intelligent reader.

OK, sounds good. As somebody wrote somewhere "writing for
'dummies' is not writing, it is pandering." I like that sort
of attitude.

> Btw., since you've posted to the group a number of times you haven't
> just "lurked". As I understand the term, "lurking" in a group means
> reading without contributing.

Fair enough. True, I have posted here a couple of times.
I haven't "contributed" much, though, I have merely
benefitted from the vast amount of knowledge available
here, without returning the favour.

> And also btw., the page linked to in the banner below explains how you
> can use a real e-mail address without having that address published on
> the Usenet. That way, you'll receive a rejection notice if an article
> is rejected. For example, it might be that the moderators find an
> article to be overquoted, and ask the author to please trim the quoting:
> if that should happen to someone with an invalid mail address, the
> author wouldn't receive the notice, and from his/her point of view the
> article would seem to have disappeared into the big bit bucket at
> Rensselaer Polytechnic -- or wherever (the sky? FFI?) it's located.

I can live with such "excitement". I have got burned a couple
of times in the past; I'd rather stop posting here at all than
risk a valid email address of mine become available to the
spammers. Posting through google, which requires a (once upon a
time) valid email address, doesn't help. If the moderators
don't let a post of mine through, well, that's the price to pay.

Rune


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