This book finds its authors drawing on their extensive professional experience to teach largely by example. For instance, to illustrate software techniques useful for any application, they present a toolkit to solve the complex problem of digital image manipulation. By using a concrete, real-world problem, with exact feature, performance, and extensibility requirements described, they show—in a way that theoretical books cannot—how to leverage existing software components and the tools inherent to C++ to speed development, promote reuse, and deliver successful software products. This book includes:

• A C++ templates primer
• Workable coding guidelines and extensive coding examples
• Quick lists of need-to-know information about Exceptions, Assertions, and Standard Template Library components
• A technique for effectively using prototypes to move your design from an initial concept to a robust solution
• A technique for building debugging support into your software without a ton of overhead
• Thirteen specific techniques to improve the overall performance of your software

The accompanying CD-ROM contains all the source code for the book's examples—the image framework, the unit test framework, makefiles—as well as useful third-party software, such as Sysinteral's DebugView and evaluation versions of the Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel IPP) for optimizing your code and the Intel® C++ Compiler.

Chapter 3 discusses memory allocation and singleton objects, reference counting, templates, prototyping startegy, and image framework concepts.

Download the PDF of Chapter 3: "Design Techniques"

Reproduced from Applied C++: Techniques for Building Better Software by permission of Addison Wesley. ISBN 0321108949, copyright 2003. All rights reserved.