Department of Computer Science

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Dr Christos Kloukinas
Reader
Office A205
Department of Computer Science
City University London
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB

C.Kloukinas (at) City.Ac.UK
tel: +44 20 7040 8848
fax: +44 20 7040 0244
Staff.City.Ac.UK/c.kloukinas

Reaching the College building (where my office is) from Angel. (https://bit.ly/fdc0K2)

Reaching the main University building from Angel. (https://bit.ly/fNKDnq)

Drop-In Office Hours (during teaching weeks)

Programming in C++

Getting the C++ tools

Practical notes:

Material

• General:

  • Syllabus in HTML
  • Handouts in PDF (these may change!)
  • Avoid casts, as if they were Burr holes... (if you think you need a cast, you've probably misunderstood something very basic)
  • C++ reference
  • C++ FAQ
  • C++ FQA (a critique of C++)
  • C++ Core Guidelines
  • Anthony Calandra's cheatsheet of modern C++ language and library features
  • Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ web page
  • Collected Papers of Alexander A. Stepanov (creator of the Standard Template Library) - check his (free) Elements of Programming book at some point.
  • Procedural, OO, functional, monadic, RESTful - what do these programming styles actually mean/look like? Have a look at the code from Cristina Videira Lopes's excellent book Exercises in Programming Style (2nd edition).
    Same problem, coded in a different style each time, all in Python (some have more than one language implementation):
    • Procedural
    • Functional
    • Continuation-passing
    • Monadic
    • Object-Oriented
    • Object-Oriented (another kind)
    • RESTful
  • Floating-point numbers are *NOT* Real numbers (1.0/3.0)*3.0 != 1.0 - avoid them! (unless you know what numerical stability is and are implementing a numerical function... then be careful!)
    By the way, sometimes (f != f) when f is a floating point number... (did I mention that you should avoid using floating-point numbers?)
  • Misc:
    • Reference cards for various things (and more)
      • What's the best text editor? - Andrei Alexandrescu (author of "Modern C++ Design", scopes, etc.)

• Sessions:

  (Lab material are part of each session)

  Note 1: Lab solutions will only be provided at about a week after the lab.
  Note 2: If out of curiosity you look at a later session and find it difficult to understand, don't worry, we'll explain it all in the class! (Also: ask questions!!!)

  
  
  • Session 1: Introduction to C++; Parameter passing by value and reference.
  • Session 2: Classes in C++.
  • Session 3: Operator overloading; I/O in C++.
  • Session 4: Genericity and C++ templates; Introducing the Standard Template Library (STL).
  • Session 5: Pointers and arrays; Iterators in the STL.
  • Session 6: inheritance and dynamic binding in C++; Genericity, pointers and inheritance.
  • Session 7: Multiple inheritance.
  • Session 8: Memory management: static, stack, dynamic; Construction and destruction of objects.
  • Session 9: Memory management, continued; Implementing a container class; Program structure, separate compilation, header files.
  • Session 10: Resource management and exceptions.

     

  • Quick summary of C++11 main changes (from Herb Sutter's talk below on what's new in C++11)
    • Herb Sutter's whole talk (and slides) presenting C++11 changes
    • Learn to use (none of these will be examined but needed for a job as a C++ programmer):
      • auto
      • Lambda (anonymous) functions
        The reference page for lambdas.
      • for_each instead of for
      • the smart pointers unique_ptr (replaced auto_ptr that was broken), shared_ptr, and weak_ptr
      • Rvalue references and moving
        • A Brief Introduction to Rvalue References by Howard E. Hinnant, Bjarne Stroustrup, and Bronek Kozicki
        • C++ Rvalue References Explained by Thomas Becker
        • Move semantics and rvalue references in C++11 by Alex Allain
        • Universal References in C++11 - T&& Doesn't Always Mean "Rvalue Reference" by Scott Meyers (just when one thinks they've understood rvalue references...)