A few recent conversations have reminded me that while I’ve been focused on bringing my Java, C# and JavaScript up to a high polish, I’ve been doing very little C++.

C++ has been my go-to language for most of my career. I haven’t written any significant amount of C++ code in a couple of years though so now is likely a good time to circle back in the sandbox at home. Not sure what I’ll write, but I’m sure I’ll find something.

Still trying to deal with a bunch of house stuff at the same time so this is likely to be slow going in the near term…

That being said, I’m still inclined to view C#, Java and JavaScript as important parts of the whole picture. Developer productivity in C# and Java is much higher than in C++, even for someone skilled in both languages. JavaScript offers an easy and dynamic environment for tasks that benefit from ease of change and don’t involve huge amounts of code. JavaScript driving a web UI very much seems to be the way things are heading…at least for serious commercial user interfaces…combine ease of development with local/remote transparency and a wealth of tools and things like MFC, WPF and JavaFX have a hard time competing.

I have a copy of C++ 1998 that I bought some time ago. The language has changed pretty dramatically since then.

The drafts have often been a decent informal ‘go-to’ option but the posted draft for C++ 2017 has a comment on the first page that suggests it is known to be no only poorly formatted but wrong in places.

While the standard isn’t the place to go for day to day reference it is very nice to have the authoritative document around to resolve some issues (and asking what the compiler you’re using at the moment does in not an acceptable answer…ever).

The ISO Standard C++ page has a pointer to the main ISO/IEC 14882:2017 Programming languages — C++ page but the buy button there is denominated in ‘CHF’ (swiss francs). The ANSI web store has it for $232.00 which is a bit steep (substantially more than I paid for the 14882:1998 back when) but may be worth the investment. Budget will tell I guess…