I’ve been writing a lot about JavaScript lately, but C++ is my first and best love (in the realm of programming languages, anyway). I finally decided to hunker down and read through The C++ Programming Language (Special Third Edition), written by none other than Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++.

I have a decent amount of C++ experience, and have read many of the C++ books written since this one was published, so I didn’t expect to learn a whole lot. Still, it was fun to read – at least until I got to the chapter on streams – and the road to C++ mastery certainly requires it.

I tried to keep a list of interesting items as I read through:

8.2.8: A namespace should express a logically coherent set of features without imposing a significant notational burden. We need a lot more guidance in this area.

8.2.9.3: It is safer to define functions declared in a namespace outside of the corresponding namespace declaration.

// this works
namespace N { void F() {} }

// this is safer
namespace N { void F(); }
void N::F() {}

11.5: Individual member functions of other classes can be made friends.

friend Node * Node::GetNext();

12.4.1.1: Data should be kept in derived classes.

14.4.6.1: Exceptions from member initializers can be caught by enclosing the entire function body in a try block.

15.2.4: I’m finally starting to understand virtual base classes, but experimentation was the key when trying to figure out how they ensure that the shared base class constructor is only called once, particularly when non-default constructors are involved.

15.3.2: Base classes of a struct default to public, just like members.

17.1: Some relational operations can be created implicitly by using namespace std::rel_ops.

18.3.1: Input sequences look interesting.

18.4.2: I forget about many of the algorithms, like mismatch, inplace_merge, and stable_sort.

21+: I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about the Streams and Numerics chapters to read them carefully. I’ve just never had much use for them.

The rest of the book was somewhat interesting, but I enjoyed the first 20 chapters the most. You, too, should be sure to read this book if you’re on the road to C++ mastery.