怎样理解“Thinking in C++”？

第一次看到题为《C++编程思想》的中译本，我以为这本书讲的是C++中的编程思想。再一看，原来英文版原著的名称是“Thinking in C++”。难道译者把thinking看成名词并解释为编程思想，把in解释为在…之中？

原著在序言中的以下一段文字的最后点出了书名：

Throughout, I’ll be taking the attitude that you want to build a model in your head that allows you to understand the language all the way down to the bare metal; if you encounter a puzzle, you’ll be able to feed it to your model and deduce the answer. I will try to convey to you the insights that have rearranged my brain to make me start “thinking in C++.”

 

中译本把这段文字中的“thinking in C++”准确地翻译为“用C++进行思考”。

序言中还有一段值得注意的文字：

You can’t just look at C++ as a collection of features; some of the features make no sense in isolation.  You can only use the sum of the parts if you are thinking about design, not simply coding.

由此看来， “thinking in C++”应理解为用C++进行思考，thinking的主体是人，而不是C++。

以前关于程序设计语言的书经常用《Programming in …》作为书名，现在该书作者用了thinking一词，我想是为了强调要学习用C++来思考设计，而不是仅仅用于编写代码。这与学习英语要达到“thinking in English”那样的境界的说法是相通的。

该书的法文译本的书名是“Penser en C++”，这与英文书名完全对应，没有歧义。