C++ Crash Course

A fast-paced, thorough introduction to modern C++ written for experienced programmers. After reading C++ Crash Course, you'll be proficient in the core language concepts, the C++ Standard Library, and the Boost Libraries.

C++ is one of the most widely used languages for real-world software. Wherever performance matters, C++ is the de facto standard. It's the language behind operating systems, embedded devices, games, web browsers, and virtual reality systems. As a C++ developer, you can program efficient software on virtually any platform.

C++ Crash Course cuts through the weeds to get you straight to the core of C++17, the most modern revision of the ISO standard. In Part I, you'll learn about all of the essential core language features. Part II introduces you to the C++ Standard Library and Boost Libraries, where you'll learn about testing and mocking frameworks, containers, concurrency, and more. Part III contains extended examples that weave together the lessons from Parts I and II.

You'll learn all the major features of modern C++, including:
- Fundamental types such as integers, floating point, characters, Booleans, bytes, voids, arrays, c-style strings and ASCII
- The object lifecycle including storage duration, memory management, static and thread-local variables, exceptions, call stacks, and the RAII (resource acquisition is initialization) paradigm
- Compile-time polymorphism and generic programming with templates, including a discussion of the proposed C++20 feature "concepts" and the Origins Library
- Smart pointers like scoped, unique, and shared pointer, data structures from the stdlib like optional, pair, tuple, and any, plus many from Boost Libraries such as Variant, Tribool, and CompressedPair