Thinking in C++ 2nd ed Volume 1 Revision 6

Learning C++
I clawed my way into C++ from exactly the same position I expect
many of the readers of this book are in: As a programmer with a
very no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts attitude about programming.
Worse, my background and experience was in hardware-level
embedded programming, where C has often been considered a
high-level language and an inefficient overkill for pushing bits
around. I discovered later that I wasn’t even a very good C
programmer, hiding my ignorance of structures, malloc( ) and
free( ), setjmp( ) and longjmp( ), and other “sophisticated”
concepts, scuttling away in shame when the subjects came up in
conversation rather than reaching out for new knowledge.
When I began my struggle to understand C++, the only decent book
was Bjarne Stroustrup’s self-professed “expert’s guide, 1 ” so I was
left to simplify the basic concepts on my own. This resulted in my
first C++ book, 2 which was essentially a “brain dump” of my
experience. That was designed as a reader’s guide to bring
programmers into C and C++ at the same time. Both editions 3 of
the book garnered an enthusiastic response.
At about the same time that Using C++ came out, I began teaching
the language in seminars and presentations. Teaching C++ (and
later, Java) became my profession; I’ve seen nodding heads, blank
faces, and puzzled expressions in audiences all over the world since
1989. As I began giving in-house training to smaller groups of
people, I discovered something during the exercises. Even those
people who were smiling and nodding were confused about many
issues. I found out, by creating and chairing the C++ and Java
tracks at the Software Development Conference for many years,
that I and other speakers tended to give the typical audience too
many topics, too fast. So eventually, through both variety in the
audience level and the way that I presented the material, I would
1 Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language, Addison-Wesley, 1986 (first
edition).
2 Using C++, Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1989.
3 Using C++ and C++ Inside & Out, Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1993.
24 Thinking in C++ www.BruceEckel.com