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

using “toy examples,” but I’m willing to accept that in favor of
producing something pedagogically useful.
3. Carefully sequence the presentation of features so that you
aren’t seeing something you haven’t been exposed to. Of
course, this isn’t always possible; in those situations, a brief
introductory description will be given.
4. Give you what I think is important for you to understand
about the language, rather than everything I know. I believe
there is an “information importance hierarchy,” and there are
some facts that 95% of programmers will never need to know
and would just confuse them and add to their perception of
the complexity of the language. To take an example from C, if
you memorize the operator precedence table (I never did),
you can write clever code. But if you have to think about it, it
will confuse the reader/maintainer of that code. So forget
about precedence, and use parentheses when things aren’t
clear. This same attitude will be taken with some information
in the C++ language, which I think is more important for
compiler writers than for programmers.
5. Keep each section focused enough so the lecture time – and
the time between exercise periods – is small. Not only does
this keep the audience’s minds more active and involved
during a hands-on seminar, it gives the reader a greater sense
of accomplishment.
6. Provide readers with a solid foundation so they can
understand the issues well enough to move on to more
difficult coursework and books (in particular, Volume 2 of
this book).
7. I’ve endeavored not to use any particular vendor’s version of
C++ because, for learning the language, I don’t think that the
details of a particular implementation are as important as the
language itself. Most vendors’ documentation concerning
their own implementation specifics is adequate.
26 Thinking in C++ www.BruceEckel.com