CppCon 2022 - Back to Basics C++ API Design - Jason Turner

Cite

• GutHub CppCon
• Youtube

Summary

Illustrates which are the bad and the good habits while writing a C++ API

Conclusion

Its all about making your API hard to use wrong

Its all about making your API hard to use wrong by: - Trying to use your API incorrectly - Using better naming - Use [[nodiscard]] liberally - Never return a ray pointer, instead prefer references or better: smart pointers - Use noexcept to indicate that a function does not raise errors - Provide consistent and IMPOSSIBLE to ignore error handling (avoid returning error codes for instance and prefer throwing errors) - Use strong types (that can not be constructed with cast / different inputs) and avoid implicit conversions. For instance, std::filesystem is a weak type since it can be constructed with a string, a const char*, etc... Prevent conversions by using delete on the relevant constructors and functions (sparingly). - Avoid passing raw pointers except for optional and unique arguments - Limit API visibility to the required on no more - Use constexpr unless there is a good reason