sutton050

As a C++ developer I've recently been in the midst of the Exceptions debate.  Exceptions as a feature of the C++ language have long divided the community, naively I've often put this down to their coming to the language from elsewhere (C perhaps) where exceptions were not the norm. This was a mistake, for in the projects I've previously worked upon the overhead of an exception compared to the ramifications of the error resulting in a crash have often totally outweighed the overhead, making deciding to employ an exception exceptionally easy (*bum bum*).  Exceptions were the norm, still are and should be to you too (according to the C++ Core Guidelines https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md#Ri-except ). The difficulty, the dilemma if you will, comes not from the feature, but the cost.  If you application domain demands high performance you can not risk using exceptions, the argument carries on therefore whether in not using them to avoi...

Constant Something Reference or Something constant reference... I ask myself this in a similar manner as Prince Hamlet at the start of the nunnery scene... For as a C++ programmer and English speaker I've always found myself most comfortable using the phraseology thus: const int X (0); And to pass this to a function: void foo (const int& p_X); I find this most useful, we're passing a constant integer reference to the function... However, I was recently challenged that this meant something else to a reader, her input was that it meant "constant integer" reference, that is we would ONLY be able to pass "const int" instances, not "int" instances.   The thinking being: const int X(0); void foo(const int& p_X); foo(X); Would compile, whilst: int Y(42) void bar (const int& p_Y); bar (Y); Would fail to compile or at least spit out a warning because "int" was not able to be passed into the function as "constant integer" and ...

Whilst cutting code I employ a coding style, which I enforce, whereby I output the scope of the variable being used with a prefix. "l_" for Local "m_" for Member "c_" for constant "e_" for enum And so forth, for static, parameter and a couple of others.  I also allow compounds of these, so a static constant would be: "sc_" This is useful in many languages, and imperative in those which are not type strict, such as Python. Some confuse this with "Hungarian Notation", it's not.  Hungarian notation is the practice of prefixing a type notification to the variable name, for example "an integer called count" might be "iCount". I have several problems with anyone using Hungarian Notation, and argue against it thus. With modern code completion and IDE lookup tools this is really not needed, with useful and meaningful naming of your variables the type is not needed and finally there are multiple types with the s...