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From: rpjday@ccu.umanitoba.ca
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Static typing and OOP efficiency
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.204355.10222@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: 15 Mar 91 20:43:55 GMT
References: <27C523A2.2155@tct.uucp> <PCG.91Feb27190941@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> <66645@brunix.UUCP> <27CE9CDC.4FD2@tct.uucp> <1991Mar4.082637.24821@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Lines: 26

In article <1991Mar4.082637.24821@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley) writes:
>
>When I teach C++, I usually encourage programmers to break those C habits
>immediately by avoiding free functions, public members (especially data
>members), non-virtual functions, and even to prefer references over pointers.
>Multiple inheritance of abstract classes is encouraged, but inheritance for
>aggregation only (building up the implementation) is discouraged.  This avoids
>most of the hassle of protected members, complex flow control, virtual base
>classes, and private inheritance, which is more a shorthand for including a
>private data member than a form of inheritance.

While we're on the topic of teaching, I am putting together a set of
lecture notes on C++, and I am interested in collecting practical examples
of code to support individual concepts of the language.  It should
come as no surprise that, the more obscure and infrequently-used the
feature of C++, the harder it is to come up with an example to 
convince rookies that, yes, there really is a use for such a feature.
Just teaching the feature is easy.  Convincing people that there is
a practical use for it is harder, and most of the books I have seen
are forced to come up with some fairly contrived examples at times.

If anyone out there has there own pet examples for C++, and is willing
to share them, I'd love to hear about them.  Thanks muchly.

R. Day
U. of Manitoba