Registration is now open for CppCon 2026! The conference starts on September 12 and will be held in person in Aurora, CO. To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, we’re posting videos of some of the top-rated talks from last year's conference. Here’s another CppCon talk video we hope you will enjoy – and why not register today for CppCon 2026!

CppCon 2025 More Speed & Simplicity: Practical Data-Oriented Design in C++

by Vittorio Romeo

Summary of the talk:

Data-Oriented Design (DOD) presents a different way of thinking: prioritizing data layout not only unlocks significant performance gains via cache efficiency but can also lead to surprising simplicity in the code that actually processes the data.

This talk is a practical introduction for C++ developers familiar with OOP. Through a step-by-step refactoring of a conventional OOP design, we’ll both cover how data access patterns influence speed and how a data-first approach can clarify intent.

We’ll measure the performance impact with benchmarks and analyze how the refactored code, particularly the data processing loops, can become more direct and conceptually simpler.

Key techniques like Structure-of-Arrays (SoA) vs. Array-of-Structures (AoS) will be explained and benchmarked, considering their effects on both execution time and code clarity. We’ll pragmatically weigh the strengths (performance, simpler data logic) and weaknesses of DOD, highlighting how it can complement, not just replace, OOP.

We’ll also demonstrate that DOD doesn’t necessitate abandoning robust abstractions, showcasing C++ techniques for creating safe, expressive APIs that manage both complexity and performance.

Let’s learn how thinking “data-first” can make your C++ code faster and easier to reason about!