EmptyCrate - C++

C++11: Decltype

jason — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:00:00 +0000

decltype is a type specifier introduced in C++11. It behaves like a function that evaluates to the type of an object at compile time. This article is helping provide some more background information necessary for the more meatier C++11 articles to come.

decltype(4.23 * 5) v = 4.23*5;

In this example, the compiler is determining for us what the type of 4.23 * 5 would be and then giving that type to v.

With some help from typeid we can see that the type assigned by the compiler is double.

C++ Partial Specialization of Templates

jason — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:26:03 +0000

In this article we are going to introduce the concept of C++ Template Partial Specialization. This is meant to be just a primer on the topic and not exhaustive. The examples here will be used and referenced in later articles. A series of discussions about C++11, now that the language has been finalized, will be coming shortly.

In C++ a template class such as this:

template<typename LHS, typename RHS>
struct Add_With_Magic
{
  static int go(const LHS &t_lhs, const RHS &t_rhs)
  {

Nobody Understands C++: Part 11: Including Me (aka, Provide Consistent Semantics)

jason — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 03:11:10 +0000

I just spent the better part of the day debugging an insidious little bug. It really shouldn't have taken that long... I even had unit tests in place that covered the code in question! Right!?

The fact is, C++ is a complex language and getting every detail right all the time can be hard. In this case I had a simple class with a boost::shared_ptr in it. In the copy constructor I wanted to clone the pointed to object, but needed to keep the pointer for other house keeping reasons.

class MyClass
{
public:
  MyClass(const MyClass &t_other)

Microsoft's Failing Support For C++

jason — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 02:20:29 +0000

Microsoft recently posted a video on Channel 9 and their blogs describing the upcoming work they have planned for C++.

The abstract of the video tries to point out Microsoft's unfailing devotion to C++ development:

C++ AI FTW

jason — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:28:44 +0000

Considering the number of articles and polls we come across asking if C++ is dying or dead combined with the decrease in C++ job posting I have personally noticed, C++ sure is alive and well in the AI frontier.

C++ takes or ties the top 27 places at the 2010 Google AI Challenge

Nobody Understands C++: Part 10: C++ Is Not an Object Oriented Programming Language

jason — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:57:07 +0000

In the context of the rest of the Nobody Understands C++ series, I feel like this one is redundant. But it seems like it needs to be said.

C++ is not an object oriented programming language. C++ is a multi-paradigm language that supports most of the major programming paradigms that have been widely accepted.

Specifically, C++ supports:

C++0x Final Committee Draft

jason — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:00:54 +0000

As others have pointed out, the Final Committee Draft (FCD) of the next C++ standard is now available for anyone to download.

Upcoming GCC 4.5 Features

jason — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:22:04 +0000

GCC 4.5.0 has frozen and the release has made it to the front page. This is significant to me for 2 main reasons.

Faster Template Compiles

A major side project of mine, ChaiScript suffers from extremely long compile times. Part of the reason is because of 1000's of templates being instantiated for even the simplest project.

Developer Day - Boulder 2009

jason — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:00:00 +0000

This past Saturday I attended the Developer Day meeting in Boulder, CO. Overall the day was beneficial and interesting even tho it was more dynamic languages centric and very few things applied directly to my C++ development.

I did present ChaiScript during a lightning talk. I'm not sure if I said anything coherent or not but a couple of people chatted with me about it afterward, so I guess it wasn't horrible.

Nobody Understands C++: Part 9: Error Handling

jason — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I was recently at a talk where the speaker was discussing the history of C++. He argued that one problem with C++ was that its design requirements included backward compatibility with C code, and one fallout of this was the requirement to support all previous types of error handling as well as adding exceptions. That is, C++ supports:

Returning of error codes.
Error handling functions.
Exception handling.

It is true that C++ supports all 3 of these mechanisms, as well as some other cruft left behind from C that unnecessarily encumbers the language. The speaker's point on this one particular case, however, is lost to the fact that every language supports the first two.