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CppCast Episode 75: Robotics with Jackie Kay

By robwirving | Oct 21, 2016 06:57 AM | Tags: None

Episode 75 of CppCast the only podcast for C++ developers by C++ developers. In this episode Rob and Jason are joined by Jackie Kay from Marble to discuss the use of C++ in the Robotics industry and some of the unique challenges in Robotics development.

CppCast Episode 75: Robotics with Jackie Kay

by Rob Irving and Jason Turner

About the interviewee:

After spending her childhood wanting to become a novelist, Jackie switched over from writing stories to writing code during college. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 2014 with a Bachelor's in Computer Science and went on to work at the Open Source Robotics Foundation for two years, supporting Gazebo, a physics simulator for robotics R&D, and ROS, an open source application framework for robotics development. She recently started as an early employee at Marble in San Francisco, a startup working on autonomous delivery.

Jackie was a speaker at CppCon 2015 and 2016 and a volunteer at C++ Now 2016 and frequently attends the Bay Area ACCU meetups. Her hobbies include rock climbing, travelling, and reading (books, not just blog posts).

Visiting variants using lambdas (2: recursive variants) -- Vittorio Romeo

By Vittorio Romeo | Oct 21, 2016 03:30 AM | Tags: c++17

The article addresses the problem of lambda-based `std::variant` and `boost::variant` recursive visitation. Starting from the definition of a "recursive variant", it shows the concept and implementation behind a `make_recursive_visitor` variadic function that can be used to create "local" visitors by using lambdas.

visiting variants using lambdas - part 2

By Vittorio Romeo

From the article:

A "recursive" variant is a variant which can contain itself, and can be used to represent recursive structures. [...] Bringing algebraic data types from the functional programming world into C++ isn't enough - we're also going to adopt another powerful construct: the Y Combinator. [...] Now we can put everything together to finally visit a recursive variant using lambdas!

Tutorial: Emulating strong/opaque typedefs in C++--Jonathan Müller

By Adrien Hamelin | Oct 20, 2016 12:36 PM | Tags: intermediate community

Who would like this feature?

Tutorial: Emulating strong/opaque typedefs in C++

by Jonathan Müller

From the article:

Last week, I’ve released my type_safe library. I described it’s features in the corresponding blog post but because the blog post got rather long, I couldn’t cover one feature: strong typedefs.

Strong or opaque typedefs are a very powerful feature if you want to prevent errors with the type system - and as I’ve been advocating for, you want that. Unlike “normal” typedefs, they are a true type definition: they create a new type and allow stuff like overloading on them and/or prevent implicit conversions.

4th Spanish C++ conference using std::cpp 2016 (spanish)

By jdgarcia | Oct 19, 2016 05:13 AM | Tags: community

At the 24th of November at Leganés in Madrid in Spain, for the fourth year in a row the one day event using std::cpp will gather professional developers in a series of talks devoted exclusively to C++. 

using std::cpp

This year using std::cpp includes the following talks:

  • C++17 is (almost) here. J. Daniel García (ARCOS Lab, University Carlos III), member of ISO C++ standards committee and associate professor in Computer Architecture.
  • Get your types to work. Software developer and contributor of several Boost libraries (example, Boost multi-index).
  • C++ and much more. An overview to the available libraries univers. Martin Knoblauch (Indizen Technologies), a software developer in the finance sector.
  • Test Driven Development in C++. Raúl Huertas (TCP Sistemas), a software developer with long background in the telecom business.
  • Using C++ in safety critical embedded systems for railways. Ion Gaztañaga (CAF), another Boost contributor (example, Boost Interprocess).
  • At a Matlab breakdown... Save me C++! Javier Garcia-Blas (ARCOS Lab, University Carlos III), visiting professor in Computer Architecture.
  • Static and dynamic polymorphism in C++11: Flexibility versus performance?. J. Daniel Garcia (ARCOS Lab, University Carlos III), member of ISO C++ standards committee and associate professor in Computer Architecture.
  • Using templates in C++ to design and implement. Jose Caicoya (Hotel Beds), software developer with background in real-time systems, finance and, more recently, hotel reservation systems.
  • Distributed systems: How to connect your real-time applications. Jaime Martin (eProsima), developer of an open source DDS impelementation.
  • Developing an reflection system for C++14. Manu Sanchez (ByTech), software developer and metaprogrammer.

About using std::cpp

The using std::cpp event has been happening every year since 2013 in University Carlos III (Leganes, Madrid, Spain), where every year around 200 developers have gathered to share experiences in using C++ for professional software develpment.

The event is organized by ARCOS Lab (University Carlos III), a research group focused in applications of high performance computing to multiple domains. It is also sponsored by Indizen Technologies.

Visiting variants using lambdas (1) - - Vittorio Romeo

By Vittorio Romeo | Oct 19, 2016 05:11 AM | Tags: c++17

The article covers a technique that allows variant types (both `std::variant` and `boost::variant`) to be visited using lambdas, without having to explicitly create a functor.

visiting variants using lambdas - part 1

By Vittorio Romeo

From the article:

Visiting a variant is usually done by writing a visitor struct/class outside of the scope where the variant is actually being visited. [...] It is possible to build such an object locally in the call site [...] by implementing something similar to `std::overload`.

The “unsigned” Conundrum--Tony “Bulldozer00” DaSilva

By Adrien Hamelin | Oct 18, 2016 01:42 PM | Tags: basics

Are you clear with unsigned?

The “unsigned” Conundrum

by Tony “Bulldozer00” DaSilva

From the article:

A few weeks ago, CppCon16 conference organizer Jon Kalb gave a great little lightning talk titled “unsigned: A Guideline For Better Code“. Right up front, he asked the audience what they thought this code would print out to the standard console:

Even though -1 is obviously less 1, the program prints out “a is not less than b“. WTF?

Overload 135 is now available

By Adrien Hamelin | Oct 14, 2016 02:32 PM | Tags: community

ACCU’s Overload journal of October 2016 is out. It contains the following C++ related articles.

Overload 135 is now available

From the journal:

Determinism: Requirements vs Features
A program can easily be non-deterministic. Sergey Ignatchenko considers how to define determinism. by Sergey Ignatchenko

Eight Rooty Pieces
Finding a square root is a common interview question. Patrick Martin demonstrates eight different ways to find a root. by Patrick Martin

Polymorphic Comparisons
Polymorphic comparisons require much boilerplate. Robert Mill and Jonathan Coe introduce a template utility for such comparisons. by Robert Mill and Jonathan Coe

C++ Synchronous Continuation Passing Style
Direct and continuation passing styles differ. Nick Weatherhead explains a continuation passing style for synchronous data flow. by Nick Weatherhead

Attacking Licensing Problems with C++
Software licenses are often crackable. Deák Ferenc presents a technique for tackling this problem. by Deák Ferenc