Resources

Contents

Welcome to my Resources section, a curated list of the books/courses/blogs/tools and websites I strongly recommend for improving your programming skills.

Please read that important disclosure:

Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with most of these products/sites, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

My Book!

I wrote a book about C++17 features! I believe this book might be useful addition when learning about modern C++!


C++17 In Detail @Leanpub

Another one!

I also wrote another book: C++ Lambda Story - it teaches lambda expressions how this feature evolved among different C++ versions


C++17 Lambda Story @Leanpub

My Interactive Course

C++17 In Detail Educative

Thanks to the collaboration with the team @Educative we published C++17 in Detail as an interactive course!
You can see it… and even preview it for free here:
C++17 in Detail: A Deep Dive

It consists of 228 lessons, many quizzes, code snippets… and what’s best is that it has more than 153 playgrounds! That means you can compile and edit code sample directly in the browser… so there’s no need for you to switch back and forth to some compiler/IDE.
I think that such approach increases your learning experience.

Sites

Books

Courses

My Recommended Pluralsight courses (that I’ve seen so far):

General C++

  • Play by Play: Modernizing C++ Code with Kate Gregory - a great interview, where Kate analyses a legacy project. She didn’t go very far, but it was valuable to see how to think in modern C++, what are some common code smells and legacy patterns.
  • C++ Advanced Topics (by Kate Gregory) - it’s a long (more than 5h) course about good practice in modern C++: like avoiding raw new/delete, C-style patterns, plus of course advanced topics, like move, lambdas, etc. Good stuff with a great teacher.
  • First Look: C++ Core Guidelines and the Guideline Support Library - (by Kate Gregory) - the course not only teaches how to work with the Core Guidelines, but also Kate describes what modern C++ is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the language and what is safe and expressive code. It’s an excellent material for refreshing the knowledge of modern C++. Useful for beginners and experienced developers.
    • Practical takeaway: how to use not_null, what is modern and safe C++, consts, tools (clang tidy, gsl library).
  • C++ Fundamentals Including C++ 17 by Kate Gregory
    • A very recent course from Kate. More than 5h of great programming course about starting with C++. If you’d like to start with C++ today I suggest taking that course.

Design patterns in C++

About design patterns by Dmitri Nesteruk (also Pluralsight):

I like the approach of writing a live code, with a simple pattern implementation. So you can see all of the details. Then, Dmitri is discussing the problems. The set of courses on Design Patterns looks like a good way to practice coding in C++ and start with Design Patterns. Still, I’d like to see more details of the implementation; maybe we can wait for the advanced version of this course someday? :) Plus, maybe a discussion about the use in a real-life project, disadvantages, etc.

COM and Windows Runtime

Starting with Windows 8 we got WinRT which is a powerful technology, advertised as the core foundation for modern Windows applications. You can use it from different languages, also C++.

Keny Kerr (author of C++/WinRT, moderncpp.com, MVP) has created a bunch of courses related to this technology. You can understand COM and then move to WinRT (which is based on COM). That knowledge might be necessary for any programmer related to the Windows environment.

Algorithms and Data Structures

Blogs

Blogging

If you run a blog (which I highly recommend for every devloper!) you might be interested in the following resources:

  • How to Create a Blog That Boosts Your Software Development Career
    • free course from SimpleProgrammer, by J. Sonmez
  • Writing is hard, especially if you’re not a native English speaker. That’s why I try to fix and improve my articles whenever possible. In 2016 I’ve started using Grammarly which is a great tool to automatically check everything you write. I am using it on my blog, at work, for emails… it works in the browser but also as separate plugins for Office (and other).
  • I am using MailChimp as my tool for the mailing list. It’s not super cheap, but works very well so far :)

Friends

Others

  • For productivity I am using Cold Turkey to block eveything and focus on the important tasks.
  • openclipart.org/ - Great source for public domain clip arts. A lot of graphics on my site comes from this site.