C++ Common Knowledge: Essential Intermediate Programming

Preface

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

—Mark Twain

...as simple as possible, but no simpler.

—Albert Einstein

...a writer who questions the capacity of the person at the other end of the line is not a writer at all, merely a schemer.

—E.B. White

When he took over the editorship of the late C++ Report, the quick Herb Sutter asked me to write a column on a topic of my choosing. I agreed, and I chose to call the column “Common Knowledge.” It was supposed to be, in Herb’s words, “a regular summary of basic lore that every working C++ programmer should know—but can’t always.” After a couple of columns in that vein, however, I became interested in template metaprogramming techniques, and the topics treated ...