The Design of C++ Standard Components

The Design of C++ Standard Components

In the Getting Started section, we described two product goals: (1) to reduce C++ programming errors through abstraction and simplification of interfaces, while (2) maintaining the levels of efficiency that C programmers have come to expect from both the language and its libraries. Because these goals are often at odds, meeting them has required making careful design trade-offs. This topic is about these trade-offs.

The first few sections of this topic concern efficiency and the techniques we used to achieve it. The final section addresses a more controversial topic: ``Inheritance: why we have mostly avoided it''.

NOTE:

It is not necessary to read this topic in order to use C++ Standard Components, but reading it will give a better appreciation of why the components have been designed in the way they have.