Chapter 1. About This Book

Ru-Brd

Although templates have been part of C++ for well over a decade (and available in various forms for almost as long), they still lead to misunderstanding, misuse, or controversy. At the same time, they are increasingly found to be powerful instruments for the development of cleaner, faster, and smarter software. Indeed, templates have become the cornerstone of several new C++ programming paradigms .

Yet we have found that most existing books and articles are at best superficial in their treatment of the theory and application of C++ templates. Even those few books that do an excellent job of surveying various template-based techniques fail to describe accurately how these techniques are supported by the language. As a result, beginning and advanced C++ programmers alike are finding themselves wrestling with templates, attempting to decide why their code is handled unexpectedly.

This observation was one of the main motivations for us to write this book. However, we both came up with the topic independently and had somewhat distinct approaches in mind:

• David's goal was to provide a complete reference to the details of the C++ template language mechanism and the major advanced programming techniques that templates enable. His focus was on precision and completeness.

• Nico's interest was to have a book that helps himself and others use templates in the day-to-day life of a programmer. This implies that the book should present the material in an intuitive manner, while dealing with the practical aspects of templates.

In a sense, you could see us as a scientist-engineer pair: We both deal with the same discipline, but our emphasis is somewhat different (with much overlap, of course).

Addison-Wesley brought us together and as a result you get what we think is a solid combination of a careful C++ template tutorial with a detailed reference. The tutorial aspect covers not only an introduction to the language elements, but also aims at developing a sense for design methods that lead to practical solutions. Similarly, the book is not only a reference for the details of C++ template syntax and semantics, but also a compendium of well-known and lesser known idioms and techniques.

Ru-Brd