Coding Style

General philosophy

API vs score

Qt versus Modern C++

• vector / qvector / qlist
• strings
• pointers : unique_ptr vs qt object model

Inheritance

• Try to limit inheritance to the strict necessary for objects in the object hierarchy.

Most of the time, there should only be a base class offered as a plug-in interface, and implementations of this base class.

• However, inheritance and multi-inheritance for non-model classes is not a problem (i.e. inheritance as a tool).
• Don't forget virtual destructors for inheritance across plug-ins, else the program will fail at runtime.

Passing values

• Prefer storing values if possible, not dynamically allocated objects. e.g.

class MyClass
{
  OtherClass m_subobject;
};

instead of

class MyClass
{
  OtherClass* m_subobject = new OtherClass;
};

Templates

Templates are an useful but complicated tool. They increase compilation times greatly, but can provide better performance than standard inheritance for polymorphism.

Core library elements should be templated if it can improve genericity and performance. They can also be used to increase code safety, by tagging classes.