Esa Pulkkinen's programming techniques page

Programming consists of writing bugs, finding bugs and fixing bugs.
Fixing bugs consists of writing bugs, finding bugs and fixing bugs.
Therefore by induction, all programs have bugs.

I've gathered a number of (more or less advanced) programming techniques, hints and advice I've used. Some of these aren't very special - mostly this is just a collection of neat tricks and hacks. Someone (I forget who) said this is a collection of solutions waiting for a problem. I tend to agree.

News:[old]I've written An javap-like utility for inspecting C++ classes from libraries [under unix].

News:[old] I've written a library that implements many of the techniques presented here as reusable components.

Reusable exception handlers in C++ describes some methods for simplifying complex exception handlers.
A partial implementation of a heterogeneous container somewhat like STL's list. It's only here as a quick hack, and is very incomplete, it's just to illustrate how you would build such a thing, and what kind of compromises you will have to make to get the convenience.
Producing stack traces describes a way to generate stack trace from within a running program.
Simulating constrained genericity in C++ describes a method for simulating generics which are restricted from the distinction of whether their template arguments are derived from given classes, and how to use that to distinguish classes of types through template partial specialization.
Determining the rank of an array at compile-time in C++ describes a method and provides an implementation to find out the rank of an array object.
Deducing type information about types in C++ describes a general method for getting access to information about a type, and how to exploit it.

Compile-time determination of base-class relationship in C++ describes how to find out at compile-time whether two classes are related by (direct/indirect) derivation.

A method for automatic definition of global functions through derivation in C++ is useful when you want to add behaviour through derivation, but something requires that the behaviour is implemented as global functions instead of member functions.

The following are techniques I've seen other people publish on the web:

Portland Pattern Repository has a lot of good information.

If you notice a broken link in any of these pages, or have comments or suggestions about the contents of these pages, please share them with me.

This document may be distributed or reproduced without permission of the author.

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