W I S C H N E R

.NET spoiled us all. The Framework's Standard Library contains answers to numerous programming challenges. From implementing http client to reading from a database – a plethora of classes speeds up the development and unifies programming experience.

Nothing quite as complete exists for C++. The open source world offers many libraries but without consistency of .NET. Except for two - the C++ Standard Library and the Boost. The latter will soon become part of the former.

Thus start your C++/Unix programming voyage by reading about Boost. Install it on your system. You do not need to compile it on Ubuntu. Just use Synaptic Package Manager to download and install. Then...whenever you identify a programming problem first consult the C++ Standard Library and the Boost. Only if solution can't be found there continue your search elsewhere.

Because the C programming language played such a pivotal role in history of Unix and open source many libraries are written in it. It is quite common to find a pair - a high quality C library to fulfill some task and a C++ wrapper to provide more modern interface.

For example - you might want to implementing http protocol in C++/Unix environment by using the Neon library as underlying technology and the Neon++ wrapper as an actual interface.

Sometimes instead of adding two pluses to wrapper library names an extension mm or xx is used. For example for C library libgtk the C++ wrappers is called libgtkmm. libpango - libpangomm. libcairo - libcairomm. libpg - libpgxx. This convention makes it easier to search for a wrapper when finding a C library to perform a task.

If not too much of a compromise try to keep your code consistent with C++ Coding Convention by selecting libraries that only use combination of lowercase letters and underscores for all program identifiers (except for template parameters, which start with capital letter).