FAQ
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QUESTION

I'm currently teaching myself C++. I'm very proficient at C#, and was wondering which common practices in C# can lead to difficulties in C++, and what a C++ programmer should do instead.

ANSWER

• The first and foremost, you must learn RAII: Resource Acquisition Is Initialization

• Make sure if you use new, then don't forget to use delete in your program. Don't mix new with malloc, and delete with free. new and malloc are not interchangeable, nor are delete and free. As in C#, you don't write destructor (usually), so in C++ you specifically need to learn how to use destructor effectively to free memory, and other resources!

• Must learn what is sequence points, undefined-behavior, unspecified-behavior, implementation-defined behavior in C++. As C# doesn't have these concepts, that means you've never heard these terms while programming in C#, so it's very very very likely that you'll write C++ code (such as a[++i]= i, i+=++i) whose behavior is not well-defined. So I would recommend you to read these topics:

  • Undefined Behavior and Sequence Points (C++)
  • Undefined Behavior and Sequence Points Reloaded (C++)
  • Difference between Undefined, Unspecified and Implementation-defined behavior(C++)
  • Behaviour and Order of evaluation in C# (C#)
    
    
• Read items from Effective C++ Series by Scott Meyers. After them, read also Exceptional C++ Series by Herb Sutter.

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PS: Since I talked about new, delete, raw memory etc, then let me add an interesting difference between C++ and C# :

In C++, this is a pointer, while in C# this is a reference!

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