Customer Reviews

Designing and Coding Reusable C++

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In view of the fact that a previous reviewer recommended reading Scott Meyers instead of this book, I thought you might like to see what Scott Meyers has to say about Designing and Coding Reusable C++. Simply put, the book is on my short list of recommended reading for C++ programmers. I describe things this way in my More Effective C++: "If you have anything to do with the design and implementation of C++ libraries, you would be foolhardy to overlook Designing and Coding Reusable C++. Carroll and Ellis discuss many practical aspects of library design and implementation that are simply ignored by everybody else. Good libraries are small, fast, extensible, easily upgraded, graceful during template instantiation, powerful, and robust. It is not possible to optimize for each of these attributes, so one must make trade-offs that improve some aspects of a library at the expense of others. Designing and Coding Reusable C++ examines these trade-offs and offers down-to-earth advice on how to go about making them."

I found the entire book worthwhile and hope for a new edition now that C++ is an international standard. Code reuse is easier with good documentation. One chapter contains important advice for documenting the design and interface to classes. An example (or even a reference to) a good class "design paper", tutorial, and class reference would be a great addition.

I read this on the basis of Scott Meyers' recommendation in More Effective C++, but I must admit that I was expecting something with a bit more zing to it.

On the positive side, this not yet another style manual, or a collection of gotchas. It looks at designing software at a higher level than coding standards or idioms. There's a fairly solid introduction to thinking about object orientation, and unlike most books, it goes into non coding issues like compatibility and documentation. There's also some material on whether to design a class with a pimpl or factory methods to reduce compile time dependencies. There's even a little bit on contract programming (although they don't call it that). And the chapter on name conflicts is pretty good.

But for all that, the coverage is not very deep. Overall, there wasn't much here that was new or fresh. It might be good for an experienced C programmer, who's migrated to C++ and is looking for some an intro to OOP.

Although the authors are clearly competent, there's not much here. Most of the material is not specific to library writing, but rather generic C++ advice, and not all that well done. Many points lack proper explanation. Examples are contrived. Read Scott Meyers instead.