C++ Style Guide - General Recommendations

General Recommendations

Rec. 1: Optimize code only if you know that you have a performance problem. Think twice before you begin.
Rec. 2: If you use a C++ compiler that is based on Cfront, always compile with the +w flag set to eliminate as many warnings as possible.

Various tests are said to have demonstrated that programmers generally spend a lot of time optimizing code that is never executed. If your program is too slow, use gprof++ or an equivalent tool to determine the exact nature of the problem before beginning to optimize.

Code that is accepted by a compiler is not always correct (in accordance with the definition of the C++ language). Two reasons for this are that changes are made in the language and that compilers may contain bugs. In the short term, very little can be done about the latter. In order to reduce the amount of code that must be rewritten for each new compiler release, it is common to let the compiler provide warnings instead of reporting errors for such code until the next major release. Cfront provides the +w flag to direct the compiler to give warnings for these types of language changes.