Peter Gottschling - Discovering Modern C++

The world is built on C++ (and its C subset).

Herb Sutter

The infrastructures at Google, Amazon, and Facebook are built using components and services designed and implemented in the C++ programming language. A considerable portion of the technology stack of operating systems, networking equipment, and storage systems is implemented in C++. In telecommunication systems, almost all landline and cellular phone connections are orchestrated by C++ software. And key components in industrial and transportation systems, including automated toll collection systems, and autonomous cars, trucks, and autobuses depend on C++.

In science and engineering, most high-quality software packages today are implemented in C++. The strength of the language is evidenced when projects exceed a certain size and data structures and algorithms become non-trivial. It is no wonder that manyif not mostsimulation software programs in computational science are realized today in C++; these include FLUENT, Abaqus, deal.II, FEniCS, OpenFOAM, and G+Smo. Even embedded systems are increasingly realized in C++ thanks to more powerful embedded processors and improved compilers. And the new application domains of the Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded edge intelligence are all driven by C++ platforms such as TensorFlow, Caffe2, and CNTK.

Core services you use every day are based on C++: your cell phone, your car, communication and industrial infrastructure, and key elements in media and entertainment services all contain C++ components. C++ services and applications are omnipresent in modern society. The reason is simple. The C++ language has progressed with its demands, and in many ways leads the innovations in programming productivity and execution efficiency. Both attributes make it the language of choice for applications that need to run at scale.

Like no other language, C++ masters the full spectrum from programming sufficiently close to the hardware on one end to abstract high-level programming on the other. The lower-level programminglike user-definable memory managementempowers you as a programmer to understand what really happens during execution, which in turn helps you understand the behavior of programs in other languages. In C++ you can write extremely efficient programs that can only be slightly outperformed by code written in machine language with ridiculous effort. However, you should wait a little with the hardcore performance tuning and focus first on clear and expressive software.

This is where the high-level features of C++ come into play. The language supports a wide variety of programming paradigms directly: object-oriented programming (), among others.

Several programming techniqueslike RAII () were invented in and for C++. As the language is so expressive, it was often possible to establish these new techniques without changing the language. And who knows, maybe one day you will invent a new technique.

The material in the book has been tested on real humans. The author taught his class, C++ for Scientists, over three years (i.e., three times two semesters). The students, mostly from the mathematics department, plus some from the physics and engineering departments, often did not know C++ before the class and were able to implement advanced techniques like expression templates (.

C++ programs can be written in so many ways. In this book, we will lead you smoothly to the more sophisticated styles. This requires the use of advanced features that might be intimidating at first but will become less so once you get used to them. Actually, high-level programming is not only more widely applicable but is usually equally or more efficient and readable.