Advanced C++ Tools and Templates

This unit advances students’ mastery of modern C++ by focusing on templates, memory management, standard and Boost libraries, and build/documentation tools. Students will combine language features, runtime utilities, and toolchains to build, test, and package reusable game-programming components.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze and design reusable class and function templates, including template specialization, to implement a template library for common game-programming tasks
• Apply modern memory-management techniques (smart pointers, pointer passing/returning) and dynamic arrays to eliminate side effects and manage resource lifetimes safely
• Demonstrate use of C++ language features and utilities (lambda expressions, auto, ranges, enum classes, random, string operations, stream I/O) to implement robust game modules and console interaction
• Evaluate and integrate platform and third-party tools (C++ filesystem, Boost libraries and tools such as Boost.Build, bcp, QuickBook, BoostBook, Inspect, and Wave) to build, document, and package C++ projects