The two examples that you stated can in fact be solved very nicely with the methods that AP posted.

In general, C++ is so powerful that in many (and I mean many) situations it allows you to write code that is short, efficient, safe and elegant at the same time. No offense, but you seem to not know an large part of C++. Once you learn more about this language, you''ll know how to use it more efficiently. If you haven''t done so already, investigate STLport (whose debugging capabilities are far better than those of MSVC STL implementation) and Boost. Also, read at least one "serious" book on C++ (I read Stroustrup''s The C++ Language).

Which program aspect is the most important one depends on the person and on the program. I would say that safety and correctness are the most important: if your program doesn''t work correctly or at all, it''s useless. If you write code that you plan on reusing later in your own applications or giving it to someone else, then reusabilty should be a high priority. You should make as few assumptions as reasonably possible and provide general methods that can be tailored to future needs.

If performance is the main concern, then readability and portability may be sacrificed. Remember to add as many debug checks, including ASSERTs on everything that can possibly go wrong, even in performance-critical code, as these mechanisms are debug-only. Also keep in mind that it is often better to optimize algorithms, not individual instructions.

For someone who doesn''t know a considerable part of the language, many if not most optimizations are premature. You should spend time learning the language until you master it, because you can and most likely will find out ways to radically improve your code, so that optimization that you thought about earlier would be not needed at all.

I used to programming with "tricks" a long time ago. I stopped when I spent half a day debugging a problem which resulted from my own stupidity: I merged two statements into one with a comma operator and after I changed some code around that line, the order in which the merged statements were executed had to be reversed. So after finally discovering this bug I said to myself that no "trick" is worth so much debugging time, and I write much cleaner and easier to understand code now.

quote:Original post by kuphryn
I am current studying Java because I have to for a class. C++ is many times more powerful.

Keep in mind that in general Java and C++ have different programming styles. A solution that is optimal for Java might not be optimal for C++, and vise versa. While the basic concepts are the same across most, if not all, languages, once you get into more advanced stuff the language plays a huge role in how you design your program.

I''m Impressed.