C++ is a powerful programming language that enables developers to create sophisticated software systems. The language has been around for over three decades and is still one of the most popular programming languages in the world which makes it Top 10 C++ Libraries.
Despite its popularity, C++ can be a difficult language to learn. That’s why many developers rely on libraries to help them streamline the development process. In this blog post, we’ll explore the top 10 C++ libraries that every programmer should know about. From GUI libraries to math libraries and more, these libraries will make your life as a C++ programmer much easier.
Boost
Boost is a collection of C++ libraries that provides generic programming facilities with better performance and fewer bugs than the standard library.
Boost has a large following, because it’s easy to use, portable and has many useful features. It includes:
- The Boost C++ Libraries Project (bcl) – This project includes over 300 open source libraries.
- The Boost MFC Library – This is an MFC 4 library that contains thousands of ATL and Windows controls, thousands more than in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or earlier versions.
STL
The Standard Template Library (STL) provides a collection of C++ classes and functions that are designed to be used together to solve problems in software engineering. STL is a part of the C++ standard library since 1998, and it’s one of the most popular libraries on GitHub with over 13 million stars.
The STL has many useful containers, algorithms, iterators and other components that you can use to make your own code easier to write or build upon for future projects.
Armadillo
Armadillo is a C++ linear algebra library that provides a unified interface to LAPACK, BLAS and ARPACK. It’s designed to be highly portable, with separate implementations of the BLAS routines in Fortran 77/90 and C++.
The library was originally developed by Dr. Robert Smith at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California as part of his PhD thesis work at University College London (UCL). It was then released as open source under the Boost Software License in 2004, whereupon it was further extended by several other contributors through today’s version 2.0 release.[1]
Eigen
Eigen is a C++ template library for linear algebra, with support for dense and sparse matrices, vectors, and arrays. It has been designed to be easy to understand by non-experts as well as experts in the field.
The library is header-only (as opposed to an external dependency) so you can use it in your own projects without having to download/install anything else first.
POCO C++ Libraries
POCO C++ Libraries are a set of C++ libraries that are designed to be as simple and as easy to use as possible. The goal is to provide a high-quality solution for developers who need an easy way to build their applications in C++, but don’t want the hassle or cost associated with writing from scratch.
POCO stands for “Plain Object Concept”. This was the idea behind this project, which aims to provide solutions for common problems in software development:
- Making your code more understandable by removing unnecessary boilerplate code like loops or conditionals (e.g., if statement)
- Simplifying dependencies on external libraries by providing minimalistic wrappers over existing functionality
Top 10 C++ Libraries: OpenCV
OpenCV is a computer vision library written in C++ and maintained by Intel. It’s used for real-time computer vision, image processing, and robotics. OpenCV has been designed to be easy to use so you can quickly create robust applications that work on any platform or operating system.
OpenCV provides APIs for the most popular languages including Python, Java and C++ (for Linux). There are also bindings available for many other languages including C#/.NET Core 2.0; R; Haskell; Ruby; NodeJS/JavaScript ES6+.
Qt Framework
Qt is a framework for developing cross-platform applications. It provides classes, signals and slots that allow you to build QML (Qt Quick) rich user interfaces on top of your application. Qt also includes support for a wide range of languages such as C++, Python and JavaScript.
Qt is available for multiple operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Top 10 C++ Libraries: ACE+TAO
ACE+TAO is a C++ framework for building distributed applications. It consists of two components:
- ACE, which is an event-based asynchronous programming model and associated library that allows you to write asynchronous code in your application’s main thread and use it in any way you want.
- TAO, which provides event-driven messaging and data processing functionality for reuse across different applications or platforms (such as mobile phones).
Top 10 C++ Libraries: matplotlib-cpp
matplotlib-cpp is a Python plotting library for C++. It provides an easy-to-use interface to the OpenGL graphics library and can be used to generate plots in various formats, including PostScript, PDF, SVG and png images.
Matplotlib supports many different types of data and many different types of visualizations. For example:
- Data such as lists or tuples
- Visualizations such as bar charts or pie charts
Top 10 C++ Libraries: FastJSON
FastJSON is a C++ library for serializing and deserializing JSON data. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It was originally designed as an alternative to XML by Douglas Crockford, who is also the creator of the Markdown web-markup language. JSON has become one of the most popular formats for exchangeable data on the web, providing fast access to structured information without requiring programmers to know how it was created or interpreted in the source code that made up those objects.[1]
FastJSON is built on top of SAX2 which allows us to build parsers that have no knowledge about their input: we allow FastJSON users to create their own parsers by implementing an interface named Parser where T represents our type of value being parsed (an object containing string values could be passed into this class). These parsers can then be used throughout your program without having any knowledge about them aside from what they return; this means there are no side effects happening inside these methods when processing incoming messages through asynchronous channels that would otherwise require some sort of synchronization mechanism if handled synchronously like with other libraries such as Boost Serialization Library
These are the most popular and useful C++ libraries.
- C++ libraries are an essential part of a programmer’s toolkit.
- The following is a list of the most popular and useful C++ libraries:
- Boost
- Qt