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Would you buy this C++ book? Please help shape its structure and contents

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Re: Would you buy this C++ book? Please help shape its structure and contents

#11
No, wouldn't buy it.

The beginning of Part 1 looks more like a beginner programming book than a C++ book. They're important topics, but none of them are specific to C++, and they're not the reason I'm buying a C++ book.

The rest of Part 1 looks like a rehash of "Code Complete" and "Clean Code." There are already good books on those subjects, and I'm not seeing what this one adds. Might be interesting to the same people who don't know about SCM and compiler warnings, but I'm not in that demographic, and even they are probably better off in the long run going with other books.

Part 2 looks interesting, but not enough to buy the first half of the book along with it. There are other books on writing reliable multi-process/multi-threaded code (both in general and in C++), and my impression is they would go into more depth than a book that tries to be as broad as this one.

I should point out I was already predisposed to say "no" because my preference is to avoid books that tie themselves to a specific language unless I'm learning the language or the particular language has an unusual advantage for a particular thing (such as Erlang for reliable multi-processing). Unfortunately neither of those apply here, so I'd prefer the more general books on these topics.

Re: Would you buy this C++ book? Please help shape its structure and contents

#12
post #6

That the first sentence of your announcement of "Reliable C++" should contain an obvious typo is an unfortunate paradox.

Maybe it's not a typo. You can fill in the appropriate verb. ... plan to improve ... ... need to improve ... ... hope to improve ... ... forgot to improve ... ... don't intend to improve ... ... leave it to me to improve ...

Re: Would you buy this C++ book? Please help shape its structure and contents

#13
post #5

First, I'll second brudger's point about scope. You say this is targeted at professional C++ developers, so you can assume a basic understanding of how C++ features work and restrict yourself to explaining how to choose and use those features to write reliable programs, don't feel any need for "completeness". You've got two sections, guidelines and design ideas. I would probably get the most value out of the design i…

Rereading my comment, I was going to add an edit about examples. PG's two Lisp books have non-trivial examples, among them PROLOG in Lisp and an inference engine. Seibel's Practical Common Lisp also contains reasonable examples - though not as full blown as PG's.

My gut tells me that the Cpp book market is mature. Clojure is a language where one could combine the literary tradition of Lisp with the sobriety of the Java shop.

Re: Would you buy this C++ book? Please help shape its structure and contents

#15
post #12
post #6

That the first sentence of your announcement of "Reliable C++" should contain an obvious typo is an unfortunate paradox.

Maybe it's not a typo. You can fill in the appropriate verb. ... plan to improve ... ... need to improve ... ... hope to improve ... ... forgot to improve ... ... don't intend to improve ... ... leave it to me to improve ...

:-) It's been corrected now.

Re: Would you buy this C++ book? Please help shape its structure and contents

#16
I wouldn't buy it.

I'm a C++ programmer with over 10 years, I buy software books, but I basically only go for well vetted books.

I dislike a chapter heading reading "Exception throwing destructors" even if that is a one page chapter with one big word "Don't." It also happens to be the type of thing I already expect a professional C++ programmer to know.

Actually, the only chapter I found interesting is #12 (MapReduce) and it doesn't really have much to do with reliable C++. But after reading up on this, I found that it gained little interest in boost [1], and its description in [2] is rather bland. Compare the description for N3554. So, instead, a book with only chapters like #12 but which touched on very useful, well-tested libraries would actually be more interesting. Not the normal libraries, the usual ones like boost in which professional programmers should already be adept, but some other ones that are real gems nonetheless. But all that is assuming that I would still be interested in writing C++ code.

However, I don't really see a future for C++ for most purposes, so "Scala for Profesional C++ Programmers" may be even more interesting.

  [1] http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2009/08/155729.php
  [2] http://www.meetingcpp.com/index.php/br/items/a-look-at-c14-papers-part-2.html
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