Modern C++ Design

What Hacker News says

1. tenderfaultJun 2026
   So happy to see Andrei Alexandrescu was included in this documentary. His book on modern C++ design was a mind opener at the time I read it. Maybe still is today. Anybody else read it?
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2. bingemakerFeb 2026
   Off topic: Back in the day, C++ programming books Andrei Alexandrescu are a joy to read, especially, Modern C++ design.

   Also, this presentation https://accu.org/conf-docs/PDFs_2007/Alexandrescu-Choose_You... killed a lot of bike shedding!

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3. jeffreygoestoAug 2023
   The Turbo Pascal 5.5 book(s), Alexandrescu's "Modern C++ Design", Scott Meyers' books, "Code Complete", ...
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4. menaerusOct 2022
   Yes, I agree, my experience is also that OOP is taught as something orthogonal over procedural imperative programming whereas it should be taught as an extension to it. But even with that said I honestly cannot think of many examples where OOP provides more elegant solution to the problem. Quite the contrary, any larger and more complex OOP-style codebase is quite an unreadable mess despite all the standard promises about the readability, maintainability, "testability", clean abstractions etc.

   I think that the biggest bend in my mind was when I set myself a goal to try to digest "Elements of Programming" by A. Stepanov and "Modern C++ Design" by A. Alexandrescu. Don't let the "modern" in the title trick you, it's a book from 2001.

   But irrelevant of the programming language, which in my example happens to be the C++, these two books triggered me to start challenging the tunnel vision I had up until then. It took me some time and a lot of experimentation to basically unlearn the OOP way of approaching the problems and trying to embrace a totally different, I'd say, almost mathematical way of looking at the things. It felt like a relief and it really had a huge impact not only on my code style but the way I think about the problems.

   Since then I think I started producing much simpler and, what I think, non over-engineered code of better quality without a lot of unnecessary cruft.

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5. rramadassSep 2022
   C++ actually has two axes; 1) Paradigm axis (i.e. Procedural, Object-Oriented, Generic, Compile-time and Functional) and 2) Usage axis (i.e. Low-level bare-metal, Kernel, Library, Application). Every feature has an ideal application at the intersection of these two axes. Another way to look at it is how best to map concepts from the Problem-domain directly onto language features. Here techniques like Commonality/Variability analysis (bedrock of DDD, Patterns etc.) are used to express concepts using specific language features and then combine those into a coherent design.

   Most of the above design ideas are found only in pre Modern C++ books. I don't know of any newer books which actually teach multi-paradigm design using Modern C++. So you will have to read the older books and then think about how you would map the same ideas into Modern C++. You might find the following useful;

   Pre Modern C++:

   1) Multi-Paradigm Design for C++ by James Coplien.

   2) Scientific and Engineering C++: An Introduction With Advanced Techniques and Examples by John Barton & Lee Nackman.

   3) Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms by James Coplien.

   4) Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied by Andrei Alexandrescu.

   Modern C++:

   1) Functional Programming in C++: How to improve your C++ programs using functional techniques by Ivan Cukic.

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6. tfigmentMay 2022
   I was kind of hoping this was updated Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu. That was my favorite C++ book and at least I thought it didn't use the STL in Loki at all. It was the better templating design though heavily at the mercy of compilers at the time.
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