Course Prerequisites and Conventions

Get to know the prerequisites and the course conventions to get the most out of this course.

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To get started with this course, we need to have some basic knowledge of the C++ programming language. We also need to know the syntax and fundamentals of classes, functions, operators, function overloading, inheritance, virtual functions, and more. However, no knowledge of templates is required; this course will teach the learner everything from scratch.

Note: To run the code on your local computer, see the Running Code on Your Local Machine lesson.

Mentions and further readings

Throughout the course, we are referring multiple times to the C++ standard. This document is copyrighted by the International Organization for Standardization. The official C++ standard document can be purchased from IOS.org. However, multiple drafts of the C++ standard as well as the sources used to generate them are freely available on GitHub. We can find additional information about the C++ standard here. A great online resource for C++ developers is the C++ Reference website. This provides exhaustive documentation of the C++ language directly derived from the C++ standard. Content from the C++ Reference is quoted several times in the course. The C++ Reference content is licensed under CC-BY-SA license. At the end of the course, there’s a section called Further Readings. This section contains a list of readings used as a bibliography and recommended for deepening our knowledge of the presented topics.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this course.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, file names, file extensions, pathnames, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “This problem can be fixed by making init a dependent name.”

A block of code is set as follows:

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template<typename T>
	struct parser
	{
		void parse()
		{
			this->init();	// OK
			std::cout << "parse\n";
		}
	};

Any command-line input can be provided in the input box:

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Command-line input for executing the code
Command-line input for executing the code

Any command-line output is shown as follows:

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Output generated by executing the code
Output generated by executing the code

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

fatal error: recursive template instantiation exceeded maximum
depth of 1024
use -ftemplate-depth=N to increase recursive template
instantiation depth
Input/output presented to the reader

Bold: Indicates a new term and an important word. For example, metaprogramming is the programming technique of using templates (and constexpr functions in C++) to generate code at compile-time that is then merged with the rest of the source code for compiling a final program. Metaprogramming implies that at least an input or an output is a type.

Quotations (“ ”): Indicate the words in menus or dialog boxes that appear onscreen. Here is an example: Click the “Run” button below the code to execute it.

Tips or important notes: The key tips or important notes will appear as follows in this course.

Note: Important notes