While in the process of diving straight into a GEANT4 example (the subject of part 2), it occurred to me that a note on programming in C++ would be of use.
Making a model in GEANT4 requires the use of C++ to build the model. A model therefore requires a main(), source files, and header files, as a minimum. It is useful to at least be aware of some general programming concepts, and their application to C++ in particular.
The C++ features that GEANT4 uses are:
- Inheritance.
- Singletons.
- Templates.
- Classes.
- Constructors/destructors, methods and arguments, constant initialisation and operator overloading.
I am not going to go into detail on these, because more comprehensive explanations are available in textbooks and online, and I consider the purpose of this series of posts to be a collection of information that is not necessarily as readily available. Here is a useful link, which gives an overview of C++ programming.
Geant4 Resource 