This year, CppCon 2020 is going virtual. The dates are still the same – September 14-18 – and we are aiming for the CppCon live event to have pretty much everything you’re familiar with at CppCon except moved online: multiple tracks including “back to basics” and a new “embedded” track; live speaker Q&A; live talk time zones friendly to Americas and EMEA (and we’re going to try to arrange around-the-clock recorded repeats in all time zones, where speakers who are available can be available for live Q&A in their repeated talks too, and we’ll do that if it’s possible – but we’re still working on it!); virtual tables where you can interact face-to-face online with other attendees just like at the physical event; virtual exhibitor spaces where you can meet the folks on your favorite product’s teams to ask them question face-to-face; pre- and post-conference classes; and even the CppCon house band playing live before every plenary session. All talk recordings will be freely available as usual on YouTube a month or two after the event, but everything else above will be available only live during CppCon week.

To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, here’s another of the top-rated talks from last year. Enjoy – and register today for CppCon 2020 – all the spirit and flavor of CppCon, this year all virtual and online!

This Videogame Programmer Used the STL and You Will Never Guess What Happened Next

by Mathieu Ropert

Summary of the talk:

The STL is sometimes seen as a strange and dangerous beast, especially in the game development industry.
There is talk about performance concerns, strange behaviours, interminable compilations and weird decisions by a mysterious "committee".
Is there any truth to it? Is it all a misconception?

I have been using the STL in a production videogame that is mostly CPU bound and in this talk we will unveil the truth behind the rumours.
We will start by a discussion about the most common criticism against the STL and its idioms made by the gamedev community.
Then we will see a few practical examples through STL containers, explaining where they can do the job, where they might be lacking and what alternatives can be used.
Finally we will conclude with some ideas on how we can improve both the STL for game developers and also how to foster better discussion on the topic in the future.

At the end of this talk, attendees should have a solid understanding of why the STL is sometimes frowned upon, when it makes sense to look for alternatives to the standard and most importantly when it does not.