Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Permission denied in /home/fromg/public_html/z-enclave.com/wp-content/plugins/enable-latex/core.class.php on line 460

About

The name Z-CPlusPlus says it all. This site is about C++; the ugly, the bad and the good. The content you find in here is my creation. Many years of proven experience working with C++ applications, mostly high-throughput transactional systems, made me a better engineer and helped me to shape up my development techniques. Working within different industries, financial, banking, telecomm, to name a few, made me realize differences among software development practices and processes. IT field is absolutely the most amazing and fascinating field out there. It is constantly evolving, stepping forward with new notions and techniques. We, engineers, either follow through with it, in which case we succeed, or we live in the past, and loose the battle. The C++ as a big player in IT field, evolves quite a bit. The C++0x, and now C++1x are the prime examples of its big steps towards the future. Isn’t that amazing how technology evolves? This site talks about C++, but it is not intended to teach you basics. If you are not familiar with C++ at all, this may not be the right blog for you. There are number of good C++ books where you can learn basics of C++ programming.
I decided to split blogs into two major groups. The first group is absolutely publicly available while the other one is password protected. The latter one has prime content on which I spent significant amount of time and research. To access my protected content on this site you need to follow me on twitter and sign up on this site. I will send you a password to access a prime content. That’s all there is to it. There is no catch, and the prime content contains information that is rather difficult to find on the web.
Please be advised that I am not giving you any guarantees or promises towards the content on this site. It is what it is and what that is is mine, it is produced by me and you may like it or you may not. You may use the code you find on this site as much as you like or you may choose not to. If you utilize code from this site, I mean you copy it, or you type it in your editor and then compile it and run it on some computer, and then, huh, suddenly something weird pops up of your screen, or worse, a computer dies, hey, do not blame me. You have been warned! I am obviously kidding in here by giving this hypothetical statement, but I am inclined to mention it. In either case, however, I encourage you to leave your comments and suggestions. After all, I created this blog for you, a reader, and the the best way for me to make it better, is to listen to your suggestions. I like to keep things streamlined so I must say this or otherwise you may not know. I am neither a writer nor a poet so please do not expect to see amazing essays in here, just my rants, my thoughts and experiences I had with C++ throughout my IT career. This is as simple as that, but not simpler. I do however, care about quality, so the blog will be clean, nicely organized and to the point. Something to align within those lines and to make this as clear as possible I am inclined to say that I will incorporate certain rules and steps when maintaining this blog. Something I call a guideline, a path or even a concept. Something I call the Z-Guideline (R+E+F+U+Q). This may look magically so little explanation may help. The (R+E+F+U+Q) = (Respect+Excellence+Focus+Update+Quality).
In more descriptive words

This is rather simple, but such a powerful and meaningful guideline. It will allow us to focus on what is best for both sides, you, a reader, and Z, being me. Please note I said: “It will allow us …” meaning most of Z-Guideline items apply to both me and you, a reader. The “Update daily” item may not necessarily apply to you, but if you are willing to pop in daily updates, questions or suggestions I am not going to say “no” to you. It is just I am trying to ensure all items as as clear as possible. I think this makes a lot of sense and it will help us to maintain this blog in a truly professional manner.
I would like to point out, that the value of having you as a reader to Z-CPlusPlus is priceless. This may definitely sound obvious, but it is worth mentioning taking into account the number of C++ sites available on the net today. This however, does not necessarily equate to the quality of information you, a reader, are looking for. I am not going to bet my money on it, but I can only imagine that you may have struggled many times trying to locate an uncluttered, easy to read and specific C++ tip or to get a professional advice or nicely written comment from others. Well, this happened to me, so I know how that feels. After I have had enough I thought to myself: “why not create a blog, a website, a nice collection of tips, advice, exercises with complete solutions?” Why not? Well, as you may see, this is the answer to my question. This blog, this rant and the Z-Guideline as a crucial part of all this. This is like the Concept of Quality C++ Info in Web 2.0. A clean, simple and meaningful approach to C++ knowledge sharing and learning. C++ code sections will usually be encapsulated within so called collapsable regions. If you are ready to go through a code, or to compare your solution with the one given in here, all you need to do is click on a link and you can see the code. And when you no longer need to look at code, you click it again and it shrinks back. I think this is pretty useful feature as it allows to shrink and expand code sections as needed, so you do not have to scroll so much when done with code analysis, for example. To add to this, C++ code is nicely highlighted, so we programmers can feel right at home, right? Line numbers are also present. This helps tremendously with code analysis. It is much easier to refer to a specific code by a line number then by any other means. Other nice feature of this collapsable region is that you can bring the entire source code into little text window from which you can easily copy it if you wish. The blog content is nicely spaced for clarity. Forget about cluttered content. It is gone from here and you will not have to get all stressed about it. Whenever I talk about performance, and yes, believe me, I will dedicate lots and lots of time and space to this fascinating field. I will support whatever claim or claims I have with real graphs and real numbers. Yes, I will. I am a freak if it comes to C++ performance optimizations. Oh, did I just say “freak”? Yes, I did, but I promise you, this will not happen again here on this blog.
And, what about C++? Is there anything I should add or say in a simple sentence to give some general idea about my perception of C++. Yes, I do actually. You gotta love it man, and at the same time ….. hate it? Who knows? One thing I can say for sure about C++ is, that this language as it stands, has 3 different faces: “the bad, the ugly and the good”. I am pretty sure you understand what I am trying to say in here. If not, please ask.
To that end, I am obliged to thank my son, Damian Mastylo, for taking time to review all my blogs and correct any English grammar, punctuation and any other English language correctness related items. Huh, son, did I say that right? I am not sure now, but I know you have already corrected what needed to be corrected :) Other than that, I hope this blog will serve you well in your C++ endeavours. Cheers!