Practical C++ Design From Programming to Architecture

This book is about programming design. However, unlike many books on this topic, this book teaches design by exploration rather than design by instruction. Typically, most authors writing about some aspect of design establish principles they wish to convey, lay out these principles in the abstract, and then proceed to give examples supporting the current points. This is not such a book. Rather, this book defines a practical problem to be solved, and proceeds to examine its solution in detail. That is, instead of deciding on a topic and creating trivial examples to support its teaching, I have defined a hard problem and then let the solution of this problem dictate what topics should be discussed. Interestingly enough, the above approach is exactly how I would tell someone not to learn a subject.

I always stress that people should learn broad fundamentals first and subsequently apply these principles to solving problems. However, this is not a book meant to teach the principles of design. Rather, this is a book meant for someone who already knows the fundamentals but wishes to deepen his knowledge of practice. This is a book meant to teach someone the craft of designing and implementing a realistic, albeit small, program from start to finish. This process involves more than knowing elements of design. It involves understanding when and how to use what you know, understanding how to decide between seemingly equivalent approaches, and understanding the long-term implications of various decisions. This book is not comprehensive in its coverage of data structures, algorithms, design patterns, or C++ best practices; volumes of books exist to cover these topics. This is a book about learning how to apply this knowledge to write code that is organized, cohesive, sensible, purposeful, and pragmatic. In other words, this book is about learning to write code that both gets the job done now (development) and allows others to continue to get the job done in the future (maintenance). This, I have termed practical design.