Slashdot Mirror

AndrewStephens writes "Good news for C++ programmers: Boost 1.36 has been released with 4 new libraries (including very useful exception templates) and a host of updates. In particular, boost.asio (the cross platform AsyncIO library) has seen major additions and now supports asynchronous disk operations on Windows. Almost every modern C++ codebase uses Boost somewhere, and many of its features find their way into the official language specifications."

An anonymous reader writes "These newfangled memory-managed languages like Java and C# leave an old C++ dev like me feeling like I am missing the love. Are there any good C++ tools out there that do really good memory validation and heap checking? I have used BoundsChecker but I was looking for something a little faster. For my problem I happen to need something that will work on Windows XP 64. It's a legacy app so I can't just use Boosts' uber nifty shared_ptr. Thanks for any ideas."

ers asks: "Most new programming languages are using garbage collection, rather than programmer-controlled memory management. The advantages are obvious: programmers no longer have to worry about forgetting to delete allocated memory, leading to far fewer memory leaks. The disadvantages are often glossed over by programming language designers - aside from the performance issues, predictable memory management can be used for controlling access to files and similar resources, creating safer thread locking code and even providing better error messages. Some programming languages, which usually predictable memory management, can also be made to behave like they are garbage collected - for example, Boost provides various C++ smart pointer classes. So, given the choice between garbage collection or manual memory management, which would you choose and why? When using a manual memory management language, when do you consider the performance and syntactic overhead of faked garbage collection to be worthwhile?"

ers asks: "Most new programming languages are using garbage collection, rather than programmer-controlled memory management. The advantages are obvious: programmers no longer have to worry about forgetting to delete allocated memory, leading to far fewer memory leaks. The disadvantages are often glossed over by programming language designers - aside from the performance issues, predictable memory management can be used for controlling access to files and similar resources, creating safer thread locking code and even providing better error messages. Some programming languages, which usually predictable memory management, can also be made to behave like they are garbage collected - for example, Boost provides various C++ smart pointer classes. So, given the choice between garbage collection or manual memory management, which would you choose and why? When using a manual memory management language, when do you consider the performance and syntactic overhead of faked garbage collection to be worthwhile?"

ndogg asks: "Many have said that there is a lack of innovation in OSS software, and tend to talk about the big projects, like Mozilla and the Linux kernel. However, I would contend that innovation is quite abound in OSS, but that the problem is the spotlight is rarely shown upon those projects that are truly innovative. For example, I would contend that Data Display Debugger (DDD) and The Boost C++ Libraries are quite unique and innovative projects. What OSS projects do you feel are innovative, but underapreciated?"

Reader yamla writes with the following review of Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques from APress. Yamla finds a few bright spots in this book, but also several weaknesses. Read on to see whether you fit into the group he says would find this book useful. Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques author Michael Hyman and Phani Vaddadi pages 239 publisher APress rating 2/10 reviewer Chris Thompson ISBN 1893115046 summary This book is useless to any other than the beginning Visual C++ 6.0 students.

The major problem This book has one killer problem: It is not aimed at C++ programmers. Let me be more specific here; it is not aimed at ANSI C++ programmers. Instead, it is aimed at Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 programmers.

Is this a big deal? Yes. The cover of the book is rife with mentions of C++. It even mentions ANSI C++. There is one, and only one, reference to Visual C++ on the cover of the book. Even inside, the index lists only three references to Visual Studio, none to Visual C++. With quotes such as 'Hundreds of tips and techniques for advanced C++ programmers' on the cover, I was very surprised to realise this book is for Visual C++ 6.0 users only. At best, the cover of this book is misleading.

The rest of this review (and the book's rating) assumes you are still interested in the book. You therefore use only Visual C++ 6.0 and have no plans to upgrade.

Other problems

For a book apparently aimed at intermediate and advanced programmers, this book contains a lot of tips that any experienced beginner should already know. Techniques such as ensuring you never return a pointer to an automatic variable really have no place in a book with the stated audience. Really, this book would be more suited to programmers who were still learning C++.

Except there are a number of other issues that make this book poorly suited to people learning C++. Instead of using standard C++ strings, this book chooses NULL-terminated C strings. Files are not included the C++ way (cstdio instead of stdio.h, iostream instead of iostream.h). The STL is not mentioned at all, with dynamic arrays having their own chapter rather than a simple mention of vectors and with an entire chapter devoted to code for sorting instead of showing the programmer how to use the STL sorting algorithms. The smart pointers? Either use the built-in autoptr or use boost.org's vastly superior implementation.

Some good stuff

This book is not completely without redeeming qualities. Many of these techniques are good and useful. If you are a new Visual C++ 6.0 programmer and you are learning from a substandard text, you may find this book covers some of the shortfalls of your other textbook. Similarly, if you are taking a class in C++ and your instructor is particularly lousy, this book could help you out.

Summary

Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques is useless to any other than the beginning Visual C++ 6.0 student. It ignores ANSI C++ to focus instead on Microsoft's implementation. It contains a number of stylistic problems, relying far too heavily on C instead of the facilities provided by C++. And finally, it only covers techniques any reasonably experienced C++ programmer should already know.

You can purchase Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.