Member Avatar for McCrockett

Hello. I'm currently taking a computer science course and I'm doing a little research paper about C++. I honestly don't know C++ too well yet. But I have a few questions that I would like to ask and feel free to post your opinions. I hope this is the right forum for this type of discussion. The questions:

  • What do you think is the most substantial programming contribution, or "claim-to-fame", created through C++?
  • What is it about C++ code that you like the most? (I'm fishing for code snippets here).

Thank you for your help.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by L7Sqr
Member Avatar for L7Sqr

I'm not sure about claim to fame, but certainly what helped C++ gain momentum was the fact that a C programmer could pick it up fairly quickly and C programs were valid C++ programs. Templates are another huge gain. There are some other topics which you might look into: RAII, you only pay for what you use, RTTI and other object-oriented concepts.

Your second question is more subjective. What I like is a product of what I am comfortable with and what I've been exposed to. There are many good tools that have been built with C++ that are a pleasure to work with due to their design. However, there are certainly bodies of C++ code that are an absolute mess - it is easy to write bad C++ code.

I would add one other thing. C++ is trickier than a language like C, for instance. In C, you are aware of everything that is happening so stepping through the code with a debugger (or reading the code) is simple. C++ preforms a lot of magic for you and leads to a more painful debugging experience. Vtables, inheretance, templates all complicate the process of reading and understanding code both in source and compiled form. Throw in operator overloading and you have your work cut out for you.

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