Modern Object-Oriented C++ is a two-day training course with programming examples taught by Arthur O’Dwyer. It is offered onsite at the Gaylord Rockies from 09:00 to 17:00 on Saturday, October 30th and Sunday, October 31st, 2021 (immediately after the conference). Lunch is included.

Course Description

Modern C++ is full of new ideas, from constexpr to coroutines. But among industry codebases, the most popular paradigm remains classical object-oriented programming: runtime polymorphism based on inheritance hierarchies and heap allocation. In this course we’ll cover modern C++’s continuing and evolving support for classical inheritance from top to bottom: from modern OOP idioms, to the machine-level mechanisms by which C++ implements (multiple) inheritance, virtual dispatch, and runtime type information (RTTI). We’ll also cover techniques for managing complexity, from smart pointers and factory functions to dependency injection and the PIMPL idiom. One unit will focus specifically on interaction testing with Google Mock.

Attendees will practice their skills with a series of hands-on lab exercises, using their own C++14-or-later development environment.

Prerequisites

This course will be valuable for anyone inheriting or maintaining a codebase filled with classical OOP, from new grads to experienced software engineers

Course Topics

Simple inheritance, IS-A, vtables, override, managing memory with unique_ptr (+ lab)

• Where is the vptr in the class layout?
• Why is override important?
• Should I use final?

Best practices: Shallow hierarchies, abstract base classes, deleted special members, NVI (+ lab)

• Why are deep hierarchies bad?
• How do I deal with an existing deep hierarchy?
• Why should I delete my special member functions?
• How does the Non-Virtual Interface idiom relate to the GoF’s Template Method pattern?
• Should overriding methods be marked public, or private?
• How abstract must my abstract base class be, really?

Hiding dependencies in the .cpp file, factory functions, protected (+ lab)

• Should I mark my constructors as private and/or protected?
• What if my methods’ return types involve third-party dependencies?
• What is dependency injection?
• When might I want a Foo::create() method instead of a constructor?
• What is the PIMPL idiom? How do I combine it with smart pointers?

Google Mock and “interaction testing” (+ lab)

• How do I use Google Mock?

Virtual and multiple inheritance, non-trivial static_casts, drawing inheritance diagrams (+ lab)

• When are virtual bases’ constructors called?
• Mechanics of non-trivial static_casts
• Mechanics of accessing a data member from a virtual base

dynamic_cast, catch, and typeid/RTTI (+ lab)

• Mixin pattern
• Speed-minded alternatives to dynamic_cast

Register Here

Course Instructor

Arthur O’Dwyer is a speaker, trainer, and blogger on modern C++ topics. He has spoken at every CppCon since its inception in 2014, and is the chair of the Back to Basics track that debuted at CppCon 2019. Arthur is the author of Mastering the C++17 STL (2017). He lives and works in New York.