Class with naive implementation of rule of 5.

Rule of 5 where assignment operators don't duplicate logic with copy and move constructors.

Rule of 5, where both assignment operators were squashed into one.

Tip 95 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Copy & swap idiom

Rule of 5 says that if you need to implement one of the copy/move constructors/assignment operators or a destructor, you shall implement all of them to avoid resource management issues. However, this often […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C++ source code showing how constrained auto can simplify code.

Tip 93 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Constrained auto

Tired of convoluted templates in your C++? Want to make them more legible?

C++20 introduced concepts - a powerful feature that can restrict your templated APIs to only such arguments that fulfil a particular […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C# snippet showing how to pin a byte array in c# before passing it to native code.

Tip 92 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Pinning interop memory in C#

When interoping C# with, for example, C++, one can send a pointer to the managed memory directly to the native code and work with it without the need to copy it into the local address space. For as […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C# code snippet that demonstrates immutability of strings and performance hits of using a string vs StringBuilder.

Tip 91 of #TuesdayCodingTips - String or StringBuilder?

If you're a C++ programmer, you can easily troll yourself while working with C#'s `string` objects. In C++, they are optimized vectors of bytes and can be dynamically resized at will through […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C# code snippet showcasing Enum.IsDefined usage.

Tip 90 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Is enum value defined?

In both C++ and C#, enums are mere named numerical constants. Even if they appear to be distinct types, and switch statements can check whether you covered all names within an enum, that's simply not […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

Original post on techhub.social

Tip 89 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Semantic versioning

When creating a library, semantic versioning is a really useful versioning scheme to use.

It's a promise to your users that changes bumping the minor/patch version numbers are backward-compatible. As such, much of the software relies on these […]

A C++ code snippet which shows json (de)serialization of a vector of variants with overloaded adl_serializer and nlohmann::json.

Tip 88 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Enum-discriminated unions with nlohmann::json

JSON is a fairly trivial format and as such, its only way of supporting polymorphic data is an enum-discriminated approach.

In other words, you might have an array of objects where […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

Original post on techhub.social

They say learning by example is the best way to learn. I'd like to share one such example of API design process based on a recent discussion with one of my colleagues: medium.com/@nerudaj/a-case-study-on...

If you follow my #TuesdayCodingTips, this showcases a […]

C++ code snippet comparing the effectivity of pushing expensive type into vector of variants vs emplacing it vs pushing back cheaper type and emplacing over that memory.

Tip 87 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Emplace into a vector of variants

`emplace_*` is an alternative to methods like `insert` or `push_*` in standard C++ containers. It allows you to construct the inserted object directly inside the container, passing all required […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

Code snippet that shows an example of an interface that breaks with every release.

Somewhat better interface since all properties are encapsulated in a context struct.

Tip 86 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Extendable logger pattern

I like my logs structured. If nothing else, I can log into a CSV file, load that CSV into Excel, turn on filters, and boom, I have a quite nice log analyzer tool. To get the maximum out of it, I need to […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C++ code snippet showing how to demangle C++ identifiers under GCC/Clang and how a "tag" type can happen.

Tip 85 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Incomplete types and name demangling

While writing type-safe APIs, a "tag" type is often useful. It is nothing more than a forward declaration of a type that will never be fully defined, just for the sake of creating a template […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C++ code showing a type trait for reading callable type's parameters and return type.

Tip 84 of #TuesdayCodingTips - C++ type trait for callable types

I recently asked myself: How do you make a reliable type trait for callable types so you can read their return values and call parameters?

The complexity lies in the fact that C++ has four […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

Expanded C++ implementation of NLOHMANN_JSON_SERIALIZE_ENUM macro.

Tip XX of #TuesdayCodingTips - Curious case of NLOHMANN_JSON_SERIALIZE_ENUM

I recently debugged a case where code generated by NLOHMANN_JSON_SERIALIZE_ENUM failed at invariant assertions deep in the nlohmann_json library. When examined under a debugger, the […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C# code snippet demonstrating exception filter.

c# snippet showing that you can use references to objects in scope in exception filter.

Tip 82 of #TuesdayCodingTips - C# exception filter

Ever found yourself in the situation where you have an exact same handling code for two (or more) selected exception types? C# has a nice way of deduplicating said code.

A `catch` block, processing a base […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C++ code demonstrating serialization through typeid with a concept for type safety, deserialization through template magic and then mattern matching on the resulting type.

Tip 81 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Pattern matching a C++ enum

For a particular C++ application I wrote, I wanted to send an enum over a string-based protocol and pattern match on it on the receiving end to make sure that all possible values were handled.

You […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C# code that prints a loop control variable in a delayed lambda.

C# code that copies the loop control variable into a local variable so it can correctly print it in a delayed lambda.

Python code that demonstrates that you can capture a variable by copy in a lambda declaration.

Python code that demonstrates that a range-based loop creates an iteration-local variables anyway.

Tip 80 of #TuesdayCodingTips - C# lambdas and mutability rules

Mutability rules in C# are funky. While trivial types are passed into functions by value, they are captured by reference for their usage in lambdas.

That can lead to stupid bugs - what if you […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C++ code snippet that loads a file into a string through seeking to the end of the file, figuring its size and then reading into a buffer of that size.

C++ code snippet that converts an input stream into an iterator that can be used to initialize a string.

C++ code snippet that redirects internal buffer of std::ifstream into a std::stringstream and extracting a string out of it.

Tip 78 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Many ways to read a file in C++

In C#, you can easily read a whole file using `File.ReadAllText` method. Obviously, things can't be as easy in C++.

You can choose the 'old way' where you pre-allocate a buffer to which you can […]

[Original post on techhub.social]

C++ code implementing a custom class with multidimensional operator[].

A simple C++ sample using std::mdspan as a view over 1D array that behaves as a 3D array.

Tip 77 of #TuesdayCodingTips - Multidimensional subscript operator

A quality-of-life C++23 feature has finally been integrated into Visual Studio (v17.12) after it was available in Clang (trunk) for quite some time. That feature is the support of the […]

[Original post on techhub.social]