IT Came without Ribbons! It Came without tags! It Came WITHOUT PACKAGES, BOXES OR BAGS! - DR. Seuss,
How The Grinch Stole Christmas !, Random House, 1957
I wrote something about Standard Template Library in 1995, then, I decided to write the last clause of more effective C as a summary overview of STL. I have a better understanding of STL. Soon, I started to receive some mail and asked me when I wrote Effective STL.
I took this idea for a few years. At the beginning, I was not familiar with STL, so I can't give recommendations about it. But over time, my STL's experience is rich, the main problem is in other aspects. When a library exhibits a breakthrough when a breakthrough is designed, it has never had any problems, but when starting using STL, this has become an actual problem I can't foreseen. Migrating to an almost simplest STL program has become a challenge, not only because the library has changed multi-end, and because the existing compiler supports template support. STL's textbook is hard, so learning "programming with STL is" is difficult; but even if this obstacle is spanning, it is also difficult to find the right and easy to learn. It may make people fear that even if the smallest STL uses errors, it will often lead to a storm for a compiler - each error has thousands of words, and most of the class, functions, or templates in disgusting sources. There is no mention in the code - almost all difficult to understand. Although I admire STL and the heroes behind it, I still feel that the programmer recommended to the industry is not suitable. I can't definitely use STL efficiently.
Then I started noticed something surprised. Despite many small problems, although only the depressed documentation, although the compiler's error information is like radio signal noise, there is still a lot of my consulting customers in using STL. Moreover, they are not just playing, they actually use STL to use the product's code! This is a revolution. I know that STL is a first-class design, but the programmer will not like to use "must endure light micro-head pain, only poor documents and book-like error messages, but design very well". I have learned that more and more professional programmers think that even a very bad STL is much better than anything.
In addition, I know that the situation of STL will only get better and better. The compatibility of the library and compiler pairs (their) standards will be better and better, and better documents will appear (it already exists - see "Reference Book" starting from page 297), and compiler The diagnosis will gradually improve (to a large extent, we are still waiting, but the terms 49 provides recommendations on it). Therefore, I decided to jug, and even the power to support the germination of the STL movement. This book is the result: 50 effective practices that use C STL.
At first, I plan to write this book in the second half of 1999. With this idea, I organized an outline. But I paused and changing the process. I stopped writing the book, developed an introductory STL training course, taught it to several different programmers. About one year later, I returned to the work of the book, according to the experience of my training course, it means that the outline is deeply revised. Like my Effective C success, they are based on the issues faced by real programmers. I hope that Effective STL is also engaged in the practice of STL programming - this is the most important aspect of professional developers.
I have been looking for a way to let me deepen the understanding of C . If you have new suggestions for STL program or if you have any comments about this book, please let me know. In addition, let this book as possible is my continued goal, so if anyone picks out any of this book, please tell me - whether it is technology, grammar, emancipated words, or anything else - When I was printed again, I added the first reader's name to acknowledgment. Please send your advice, insight, and criticize to Estl@aristeia.com. I maintained a revision record for the first printing of this book, including erroneous correction, text consuming, and technology updates. This record can be obtained from the Effective STL's errata website http://www.aristeia.com/bookerrata/estl1e-errata.html.
If you want to get notifications when I make changes to this book, I think you should join my mailing list. I use this list to notify me people in my C job. For details, please see http://www.aristeia.com/mailinglist/.
Scott Douglas Meyers
Stafford, Oregon
http://www.aristeia.com/
April 2001
