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 I will earn a commission if you choose to make a purchase. 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 valuable, 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 a useful addition when learning about modern C++!

C++17 In Detail ebook @Leanpub
C++17 In Detail in print @Amazon

Another one!

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

C++ Lambda Story ebook @Leanpub
C++ Lambda Story in print @Amazon

My Interactive Courses @Educative

Initializing Data Members

Initializing Data Members: From C++11 till C++20

Initializing Data Members: From C++11 till C++20

Throughout this course, you will learn all the options to initialize data members in C++ using a simpler syntax and safer code. More specifically, in this mini course you will learn non-static data member initialization, inline variables, designated initializers, and more. Additionally, you’ll see the changes and new techniques from C++11 to C++20 to really round out your understanding.

It’s a “mini-course,” consisting of 17 lessons, targeted towards beginners, approximately 3 hours to complete.

C++17

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 an approach increases your learning experience.

Books

And a lot of good books in the C++ Category on Leanpub: C++ @Leanpub.

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 five hours) 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, 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, kennykerr.ca/, 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

“Aggregators”

Sites

Job Boards

Blogging & Tools

If you run a blog (which I highly recommend for every developer!), you might be interested in the following course How to Create a Blog That Boosts Your Software Development Career it’s short and free course from SimpleProgrammer, by J. Sonmez

Content and Hosting

I write most of my text in Markdown. For editing, I really like and use Typora. The website (cppstories) is run on Hugo. With Hugo I can simply commit my markdown content, and it will be nicely rendered as a static website. The site is hosted on Netlify.

To synchronise my content and important documents across my machines I use Dropbox (join here via the referral link).

Writing

If you’re not a native English speaker (as I am), it might be easy to make mistakes. That’s why I try to fix and improve my articles whenever possible. In 2016 I started using Grammarly, a great tool to check everything you write automatically. I am using it on my blog, at work, for emails… it works in the browser and as separate plugins for Office (and others).

Email System

I am using MailChimp as my tool for the mailing list.

Graphics

For graphics, I depend on Xara Cloud - The smart way to create marketing documents that work | Xara Cloud - it’s excellent for creating headers, diagrams, logos and much more!

Productivity

For productivity, I use Cold Turkey to block everything and focus on the essential tasks.

Friends