▶Book Description
C++ is a general-purpose programming language designed with the goals of efficiency, performance, and flexibility in mind. Design patterns are commonly accepted solutions to well-recognized design problems. In essence, they are a library of reusable components, only for software architecture, and not for a concrete implementation.
The focus of this book is on the design patterns that naturally lend themselves to the needs of a C++ programmer, and on the patterns that uniquely benefit from the features of C++, in particular, the generic programming. Armed with the knowledge of these patterns, you will spend less time searching for a solution to a common problem and be familiar with the solutions developed from experience, as well as their advantages and drawbacks. The other use of design patterns is as a concise and an efficient way to communicate. A pattern is a familiar and instantly recognizable solution to specific problem; through its use, sometimes with a single line of code, we can convey a considerable amount of information. The code conveys: "This is the problem we are facing, these are additional considerations that are most important in our case; hence, the following well-known solution was chosen."
By the end of this book, you will have gained a comprehensive understanding of design patterns to create robust, reusable, and maintainable code.
▶What You Will Learn
⦁ Recognize the most common design patterns used in C++
Understand how to use C++ generic programming to solve common design problems
Explore the most powerful C++ idioms, their strengths, and drawbacks
Rediscover how to use popular C++ idioms with generic programming
Understand the impact of design patterns on the program's performance
▶Key Features
⦁ Delve into the core patterns and components of C++ in order to master application design
⦁ Learn tricks, techniques, and best practices to solve common design and architectural challenges
⦁ Understand the limitation imposed by C++ and how to solve them using design patterns
▶Who This Book Is For
This book is intended for C++ programmers who want to learn from the wisdom of the community—from commonly-recognized good solutions to frequently occurring design problems. Another way to put it is that this book is a way for a programmer to learn from someone else's mistakes.
This is not a learn C++ book; the target audience is mostly programmers who are reasonably familiar with the tools and the syntax of the language, and who are more interested in learning how and why these tools should be used. However, this book will also be useful for programmers wanting to learn more about C++, but wishing that their study could be guided by concrete and practical examples (for such programmers, we recommend having a C++ reference book close to hand as well). Finally, programmers who want to learn not just what's new in C++11, C++14, and C++17, but what all these new features can be used for, will hopefully find this book illuminating as well.
▶What this book covers
⦁ Chapter 1, An Introduction to Inheritance and Polymorphism, provides a brief overview of the object-oriented features of C++. This chapter is not intended as a reference for objectoriented programming in C++, but, rather, highlights the aspects of it that are important for the subsequent chapters.
⦁ Chapter 2, Class and Function Templates, provides an overview of the generic programming facilities of C++—class templates, function templates, and lambda expressions. This chapter covers template instantiations and specializations, along with template function argument deduction and overload resolution, and prepares you for more complex uses of templates in later chapters.
⦁ Chapter 3, Memory Ownership, describes modern idiomatic ways of expressing different kinds of memory ownership in C++. This is a collection of conventions or idioms—the compiler does not enforce these rules, but programmers will find it easier to understand each other if they use the shared idiomatic vocabulary.
⦁ Chapter 4, Swap - From Simple to Subtle, explores one of the most basic C++ operations, the swap, or exchange, of two values. This operation has surprisingly complex interactions with other C++ features that are discussed in the chapter.
⦁ Chapter 5, A Comprehensive Look at Resource Acquisition is Initialization, explores in detail one of the fundamental concepts of C++, that of resource management, and introduces what may be the most popular C++ idiom, RAII, which is the standard C++ approach to managing resources.
⦁ Chapter 6, Understanding Type Erasure, provides insight into a C++ technique that has been available in C++ for a long time, but has grown in popularity and importance since the introduction of C++11. Type erasure allows the programmer to write abstract programs that do not explicitly mention certain types.
⦁ Chapter 7, SFINAE and Overload Resolution Management, discusses SFINAE—a C++ idiom that is, on the one hand, essential to the use of templates in C++ and just happens transparently, while on the other hand, requires a very thorough and subtle understanding of C++ templates when used purposefully.
⦁ Chapter 8, The Curiously Recurring Template Pattern, describes a mind-wrapping template based pattern that combines the benefits of object-oriented programming with the flexibility of templates. The chapter explains the pattern and teaches you how to use it properly to solve practical problems. Lastly, this chapter prepares you for recognizing this pattern in later chapters.
⦁ Chapter 9, Named Arguments and Method Chaining, covers an unusual technique for calling functions in C++, using named arguments instead of positional ones. This is another one of those idioms we use implicitly in every C++ program, but its explicit purposeful use takes some thought.
⦁ Chapter 10, Local Buffer Optimization, is the only purely performance-oriented chapter in this book. Performance and efficiency are critical considerations that influence every design decision that affects the language itself—there is not a feature in the language that was not reviewed from the point of view of efficiency before being accepted into the standard. It is only fair that a chapter is dedicated to a common idiom used to improve the performance of C++ programs.
⦁ Chapter 11, ScopeGuard, introduces an old C++ pattern that has changed almost beyond recognition with the recent versions of C++. The chapter teaches you about a pattern for easily writing exception-safe, or, more generally, error-safe code in C++.
⦁ Chapter 12, Friend Factory, describes another old pattern that finds new uses in modern C++. This pattern is used to generate functions associated with templates, such as arithmetic operators for every type generated by a template.
⦁ Chapter 13, Virtual Constructors and Factories, covers another classic object-oriented programming pattern as applied to C++, the Factory pattern. In the process, the chapter also shows you how to get the appearance of polymorphic behavior from C++ constructors, even though constructors cannot be virtual.
⦁ Chapter 14, The Template Method Pattern and the Non-Virtual Idiom, describes an interesting crossover between a classic object-oriented pattern, the template, and a very C++-centric idiom. Together, they form a pattern that describes the optimal use of virtual functions in C++.
⦁ Chapter 15, Singleton, a Classic OOP Pattern, explains another classic object-oriented pattern, the Singleton, as it applies to C++. The chapter discusses when the pattern can be reasonably applied and when it should be avoided, and demonstrates several common implementations of the Singleton.
⦁ Chapter 16, Policy-Based Design, covers one of the jewels of C++ design patterns, the Policy pattern (more commonly known as the Strategy pattern), applied at compile time, that is, as a generic programming pattern instead of an object-oriented pattern.
⦁ Chapter 17, Adapters and Decorators, discusses the two very broad and closely related patterns as they apply to C++. The chapter considers the use of these patterns in objectoriented designs, as well as in generic programs.
⦁ Chapter 18, Visitor and Multiple Dispatch, rounds off our gallery of the classic objectoriented programming patterns with the perennially popular Visitor pattern. The chapter explains the pattern itself, then focuses on the ways that modern C++ makes the implementation of Visitor simpler, more robust, and less error-prone.
