So I've been starting to look at career moves that require more systems-level programming, and as a result I'm circling back to studying C++. I've done a lot with C++ in the past, but as I've spent more time making other languages work for my professional/personal studies, I've undoubtably forgotten some good tricks and missing some new developments.

Almost immediately I encounter my first C++ learning challenge: what reference material do I use to (re-)learn the more granular bits? I haven't been able to find an obvious consensus on good books for every C++ developer to read (unlike the evangelization of, say, Effective Java). This divergence I think justifies my "book" choice for this task: C++ Core Guidelines by Bjarne Stroustrup and Herb Sutter. It's not quite book-length, but its more up to date than any of the 2000s-era books I'v had recommended, and anything from Stroustrup on C++ seems likely to have some relevant technical detail.

Introduction

The Introductoin starts with some boilerplate covering patch notes from previous versions and philosophical aims of the guide. Notably, their stated goal is to encourage use of certain C++ extensions as a substitute for more dangerous practices. The rules I remember best in Effective Java are all of the form "Prefer _____ over _____", so I'm already feeling comfortable with the format. The intro also points out that rules aren't meant to be read serially. Because I have no specific program to check parameters and because of the format of this blog, I will present them serially, but feel free to jump around the posts or skip to the article itself and navigate its links, I think the implication is that they won't be strictly dependant on each other.

The introduction alse contains a statement of values for what kind of code they're written to enforce: a "strongly-typed" and "memory-safe" application.

That sounds like it plays to C++'s strengths and guards against its weaknesses; I think I'm in the right place.