Writing a factory method might be simple: unique_ptr<IType> create(name) { if (name == "Abc") return make_unique<AbcType>(); if (name == "Xyz") return make_unique<XyzType>(); if (...) return ... return nullptr; } Just one switch/if and then after a match you return a proper type. But what if we don’t know all the types and names upfront?

Inside const methods all member pointers become constant pointers. However sometimes it would be more practical to have constant pointers to constant objects. So how can we propagate such constness? The problem   Let’s discuss a simple class that keeps a pointer to another class. This member field might be an observing (raw) pointer, or some smart pointer.

Let’s see pimpl and its alternatives in a real application! I’ve implemented a small utility app - for file compression - where we can experiment with various designs. Is it better to use pimpl or maybe abstract interfaces? Read on to discover. Intro   In my previous post I covered the pimpl pattern.

Have you ever used the pimpl idiom in your code? No matter what’s your answer read on :) In this article I’d like to gather all the essential information regarding this dependency breaking technique. We’ll discuss the implementation (const issue, back pointer, fast impl), pros and cons, alternatives and also show examples where is it used.

In Poland, it’s only a few hours until the end of the year, so it’s an excellent chance to make a summary of things that happened to C++! As you might guess the whole year was dominated by the finalization and publication of C++17. Yet, there are some other “big” things that happened.

When I was working on the Smart Pointer Reference Card I run into a quite interesting issue. It appears that in some cases memory allocated for the object controlled by smart_ptr might not be released until all weak pointers are also ‘dead’. Such case was surprising to me because I thought that the moment the last share_ptr goes down, the memory is released.

Modern C++ stresses the use of RAII objects to manage resources. One of the easiest ways is just to start using unique_ptr across your code. Let’s see how we can leverage this smart pointer type. I’ve come up with 5 (or more?) reasons where unique_ptr shines. Intro   One of my favourite features of modern C++ is smart pointers.

How do you see the new C++ standard? Is it ok? Great? Meh? Last week, after a few years of break, I presented my new talk that addressed the above question! It happened at the Cracow C++ Local Group. Have a look what’s inside this talk. Intro   Listing all of the features from the new standard might sound simple at first glance.

This year I had a chance to visit Wroclaw for the 4th edition of Code Dive! Two days of a great programming conference! Briefly: many of topics related to C++, two days, 40 presentations, lots of people and a beautiful city. What more do you need? :) Continue below to read my report from the event.

For my article series about C++17 features, I’ve made a separate entry about new attributes. At first sight, I thought that [[nodiscard]] is just another simple and a rarely used thing. But later I thought… hmmm… maybe it might be valuable? One reason is that [[nodiscard]] might be handy when enforcing code contracts.

Do you write code 100% of your job time? I’m guessing the answer is no. Ignoring the whole management part, meetings, coffee, youtube, cats, etc, even if you’re sitting at your keyboard you’re not typing all the time. So what else are you doing? The short answer: you’re probably figuring out what to write and where to add new features (and what to fix)… so you’re mostly reading and trying to understand the code.

Three weeks ago with Jonathan from Fluent C++, we announced a coding challenge: link here. Let’s meet the winner and discuss some of the best solutions (Our choice is quite surprising! See why :)) First of all, I’d like to thank you all for the submissions to the challenge. The task was ambitious!