What are smart pointers?

Pointers are extremely useful, but they are also the source of hard-to-detect memory leaks. "Smart" pointers attempt to address this problem.

Using multiple inheritance to decrease compile time

When working on a modest-scale project, long compile times can be both a blessing (coffee breaks, anyone?) or an annoyance (staring at the screen with a long face). Most of the time, long compile times are an indication of poor design. Here's a tip on using multiple inheritance to decrease the compile time and improve maintainability.

Circular references and forward declarations

In OOP, circular references occur when a class A needs to refer to another class B which also needs to refer to the referring class A.

The static member in a nested class

Sometimes, it is desired to track the number of objects created on the heap by a particular class. Suppose class A_outer has a nested class A_inner. A_outer creates objects of A_inner on the heap. Is it possible to track how many A_inner objects were created by an instance of A_outer using a static member in A_inner?