C++ is like a fairytale forest, where staying on the one safe path through the woods (unmarked, known only by whispered lore) will give you a reliable system, but where you are constantly tempted by easier-looking diversions at the end of which lurk grues.
And heaven help you if nobody has yet whispered to you the secret of the one safe path. Or if you consulted an older textbook, and the idiom it taught has a grue.
It's pretty well known that one should read Stroustrup's book and the Meyers books. If one were to learn in a vacuum, perhaps they would take a false path, but the community is in agreement on what the best learning resources are.
As cute as your comment is trying to be, most languages cannot be learned by blindly trying things out, one should actually read a few books, try to be a part of the community and so on.
There's no such thing as an agreement. Perhaps on the learning resources, but not about which features should be used, which I think it is a better interpretation of the parent's comment.
Take the C++ that's used on Chrome and compare to a Qt application. They'll be very different, and some features will be outright forbidden, depending on the codebase (for instance, Qt doesn't use copy constructors, or exceptions, and uses its own smart pointer classes). Not even templates, if you are using QObjects.
You not knowing anybody who uses RTTI doesn't mean much. I know people who use it. Our coding standard at work is mostly based on Meyers and Alexandrescu's guidelines.
Chrome and Qt's standards and design choices are their business and do not mean there is no recommended way to do things.
I am talking about Effective C++, More effective C++ and Effective STL by Meyers and The C++ programming language by Stroustrup.
Effective Modern C++ is about the new C++11 and C++14 standards. I am reading it now, looks good so far.
If you can get one thing, maybe Stroustrup's book would be the best choice, but make sure you get the latest edition which includes C++11. Note that amazon.fr has the kindle versions at significant discount (there's also a bundle of Meyers' first three books) if you are ok with their DRM.
I remember being a student and not having a big budget for books. Now I have a small apartment, and no space to put the books I have.
Abe Books ( http://www.abebooks.com/ ) provides a good place to look for used copies of books. A significant portion of the books in my library have stamps on the pages indicating that they were discarded from really nice institutions.
Of course there are always free-to-read blogs, but unfortunately, good C++ blogs are harder to find than other, newer language blogs.
> C++ is like a fairytale forest, where staying on the one safe path through the woods (unmarked, known only by whispered lore) will give you a reliable system, but where you are constantly tempted by easier-looking diversions at the end of which lurk grues.
And heaven help you if nobody has yet whispered to you the secret of the one safe path. Or if you consulted an older textbook, and the idiom it taught has a grue.