How to revive C++ skills

Question

I was a C++ developer (mostly ATL/COM stuff) until, as many of us, I switched to C# in 2001. I didn't do much C++ programming since then.

Do you have any tips on how to revive my C++ skills? What has changed in C++ in the last years? Are there good books, articles or blogs covering the language. The problem is that most material I could find either targets people who are new to the language or those with a lot of experience.

Which C++ libraries are popular these days? I guess I will need to read on the STL because I didn't use it much. What else? Boost? ATL? WTL?

Answer 1

Boost - though it, and other libraries were around back then, its only relatively recently that it's taken off in a big way. Google for TR1 and c++0x standards too. You should defintely read up on STL because (IMHO) its the thing that makes C++ special.

ATL is as good a dead technology (don't get me wrong, I liked it and still use it somewhat, but its not fashionable in the MS world anymore).

Something like QT is probably more new and cool for C++ developers, and has the advantage of getting you into all the new Linux and web development that'll be increasingly popular over the next few years.

However, once you start looking at the things you can do, I think it'll all come back quite quickly.

Answer 2

I personally find that syntax is where i mostly need to catch up when i wander back to a language i havent used in a long time. But the concepts and what the language is about stays the same in memory.

Assuming its the same with you, i would say its a good idea to relook at the texts you remember to have been useful to you while learning C++. I would recommned Thinking in C++ for getting up fast on the syntax.

STL would be really useful yes. Thats one thing i have found commonly appreciated by all mature C++ programmers. It would be useful to know the libraries that Boost provides.

The changes to C++ world, depends on the changes your favourite compiler has decided to implement. Since you mentioned ATl/COM i assume it would be VC++. The changes to MFC would be support for Windows Forms (2005 vc++) and Vista compliant uI's and ribbon support(?) (2008 Vc++)

VC++ now supports managed C++ -i'm sure you know what that is coming from the C# world - 2008 adds supports for managed STL too.

VC++ is trying to be more standards compliant and are making some progress in that area.

They have introduced lots of secure functions that depreciate the old stds like strcpy and the compilers will also give warnings if you use the old fns.

VC++2005 also has something called function attributes, which it uses to describe the parameters so that it can do more checking on the inputs you pass in and statically flag a warning if it sees soething amiss. Usefuli would say though our shop has not progressed to using the 2005 compiler.

MSDN has the list of breaking changes for each releases. Oh & Support for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, and Windows NT 4.0 has been removed from 2005 version of VC++. Additionally the core libraries you required till now (CRT, ATL, MFC etc) now support a new deployment model which makes them shared side sy side assemblies and requires a manifest.

This link should get you going - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y8bt6w34.aspx

2008 adds even more like Tr1 recommendations, more optimizning compiler, parallel compilation(/mp), support for new processor architectures etc. Open Mp support has also been enhanced in one of these versions is what i remember.

Again refer MSDN - thats the suthentic source for all the answers.

Good luck.