Re-learning C++ is proving to be something of an exercise in frustration thus far; it seems there is so much you need to know before you can get anything useful done. And choices that need to be made, this library or that. When I started programming it was 90% about the language and 10% about the libraries, now it is probably the opposite.

Of course, I do actually know that is all irrelevant; no-one springs forth a fully-formed programmer, you pay your dues slogging through learning and reference materials, gradually working your way up from writing Hello, world! via proofs-of-concept to real programs. Rome wasn’t built in a day! What I need to do is stop reading so much and just start coding something – this isn’t as dangerous as it sounds as I do have the foundations already in place for decent OO, and I’ve kept up with ideas like RAII and copy-and-swap, and smart pointers and the other goodies in Boost etc.

And I have been here before, about one year ago I started this blog as I set out to learn and use OCaml! I have been successful in that in as much as I can use it for “real work”, particularly since writing OCI*ML†, which required dusting off my C. This C++ diversion too is mainly in support of OPERATION FOOTHOLD, for working with Coherence, Qt, Agg and others, all of which make use of advanced C++ features.

† And I haven’t forgotten there is more work needed on that as well, for example LOBs.