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Webinar Recording: A Tour of Modern C++

By Anastasia Kazakova | Aug 24, 2015 01:14 AM | Tags: None

The recording of our July 2nd webinar, A Tour of Modern C++, is now available.

Webinar recording

by Anastasia Kazakova

In this webinar, Dmitri Nesteruk shows the latest language additions introduced in C++11 and also talks a little bit about some of the forthcoming features in C++14 and 17.

Demo project can be found on GitHub.

Agenda:

  • 01:02 - Uniform initialization, initializer lists.
  • 09:47 - Auto & decltype.
  • 17:42 - Override & final.
  • 22:03 - Lambdas.
  • 28:10 - Strongly typed enumerations.
  • 30:43 - Range-based 'for' loops.
  • 34:05 - Static asserts.
  • 37:33 - Type traits.
  • 38:53 - Variadic templates.
  • 45:04 - Smart pointers.
  • 54:47 - rvalue references.
  • 01:01:08 - Q&A session.

 

Listen to the recording and read the answers to some of the questions asked during the webinar in our blog post.

Easier To Use, And More Expressive--Tony DaSilva

By Adrien Hamelin | Aug 21, 2015 08:39 AM | Tags: c++11 basics

Here is some reasonning of the new standard:

Easier To Use, And More Expressive

by Tony DaSilva

From the article:

One of the goals for each evolutionary increment in C++ is to decrease the probability of an average programmer from making mistakes by supplanting “old style” features/idioms with new, easier to use, and more expressive alternatives. The following code sample attempts to show an example of this evolution from C++98/03 to C++11 to C++14...

CppCast Episode 23: Game Dev and Low Latency with Nicolas Guillemot

By robwirving | Aug 21, 2015 06:23 AM | Tags: None

Episode 23 of CppCast the only podcast for C++ developers by C++ devlopers. In this episode Rob and Jason are joined by Nicolas Guillemot to discuss the ongoing work of the GameDev and Low Latency C++ Study Group.

CppCast Episode 23: Game Dev and Low Latency with Nicolas Guillemot

by Rob Irving and Jason Turner

About the interviewee:

Nicolas Guillemot started studying C++ and OpenGL to make games, and fell in love with them. He enjoys participating in game jams, and has had the opportunity to work in some game development studios: Inlight Entertainment, and Electronic Arts. He is currently taking a break from finishing a bachelor's in software engineering to work at Intel, doing mostly graphics-related work to help game developers take advantage of Intel GPU features.

CppCon 2015 Program Highlights, 4 of N

By Adrien Hamelin | Aug 20, 2015 09:00 AM | Tags: None

The CppCon 2015 conference program has been posted for the upcoming September conference. We’ve received requests that the program continue to be posted in “bite-sized” posts, a few sessions at a time, to make the 100+ sessions easier to absorb, so here is another set of talks. This series of posts will conclude once the entire conference program has been posted in this way.

 

The C++ possess another language inside it: the template language. It is useful for a lot of things, from writting less code to compile time computations or checks, but can lengthen compile time too. To master it is not easy.

The following interrelated CppCon 2015 talks tackle these issues and more (part 2).

In this post:

  • Compile-time tools supporting generic programming in C++
  • C++ metaprogramming: a paradigm shift
  • Pruning Error Messages From Your C++ Template Code
  • C++ Metaprogramming: Journey from simple to insanity and back
  • boo{stache} exposed : the inner-workings of a generic template engine

 

Compile-time tools supporting generic programming in C++

Generic programming is a programming paradigm which makes it possible to build highly extensible and efficient libraries. In C++ it can be implemented using templates, therefore developers and users of generic libraries need to understand how the compiler works with templates. The details are important when the code using a library instantiates different templates (or specialisations), or the same templates but with different arguments as expected. Fixing such bugs can lead to difficult debugging sessions. These are not bugs in the program's runtime behaviour. These are bugs in the program's compile-time behaviour and therefore different tools are needed to find them. Tools providing insight into what happens during the compilation process are needed.

Template metaprogrammers have been pushing the limits of what is possible using templates. The way they use templates is usually more complex than what generic libraries need. Recently a number of advanced tools supporting template metaprogrammers have been built. REPL shells, debuggers, profilers are available to make it possible to see what happens during compilation.

This talk presents how these tools can be used and be useful for the developers and users of generic libraries. Insight into what happens inside the compiler can be extremely useful to understand why the code compiles slowly, behaves the way it does or to debug errors in code using generic libraries.


C++ metaprogramming: a paradigm shift

Most people think metaprogramming is hard. It isn't; we just didn't have the right tools for it. This talk will present a new way of metaprogramming using the same syntax as that of normal C++. It will show how the runtime and the compile-time boundaries can be crossed almost seamlessly. It will show how compilation times can be reduced without sacrificing expressiveness. It will introduce Hana [1], a newly accepted Boost library using cutting edge features of the language in a creative way to solve the problem of metaprogramming for good.

[1]: http://github.com/ldionne/hana


Pruning Error Messages From Your C++ Template Code

Many template libraries are regarded with ambivalent feelings by developers: On the one hand, such libraries can offer wonderful functionality. On the other hand, they are dreaded for the sheer amount of error messages spilled out by the compiler when there is even a small bug in the developer's code. This talk will demonstrate several techniques to drastically reduce the amount of compiler output in case of errors (with real-life examples, of course).


C++ Metaprogramming: Journey from simple to insanity and back

Part I: Introduction to template metaprogramming. Template metaprogramming is a variant of generic programming, a technique that uses C++ template mechanism to perform computations at compilation time, usually to generate, from a single description, executable code that depends on the properties of the data types. It can be viewed as “programming with types”. In this example-driven class we start with the overview of the metaprogramming tools (everything you wanted to know about template specializations but were afraid to ask). We will apply these tools to simple examples, such as: how to sort a sequence in order of increasing values, unless it’s a sequence of pointers, in which case we want the values of what they point to. Part II: Advanced techniques and practical applications. Simple examples of metaprogramming are fun and useful, but once you master them you start chafing at the limitations. This is C++, where we don’t suffer limitations gladly. We therefore move on to the more advanced techniques, including SFINAE, and the appropriately more advanced examples. The journey takes us back to the beginning: after all, when sorting a sequence of values vs a sequence of pointers, you don’t really care whether the pointer is smart or dumb. What you really want to know is whether “*p” compiles or not. What you really need is an “if_compiles” metaprogramming function.


boo{stache} exposed : the inner-workings of a generic template engine

Template engines are commonly found generating web pages, customer reports, or even source code. They take a source template and data model as input and generate some desired output.

Boostache was started as the Library in a Week challenge from CppNow'14 with initial support for Mustache.

Today Boostache supports multiple template formats and adapts automagically at compile time to user defined data models. Many of the techniques utilized in Boostache are the same that Ciere has employed in custom IDL compilers, Domain Specific Language systems, compilers, and runtimes.

This talk will briefly introduce Boostache and then delve into the internal architecture and design of the library. We will explore some implementation details of the parser, compiler, virtual machine, and generic data model infrastructure with the goal to expose useful techniques and patterns from this C++11 code base that can be used in your own libraries and applications.

Messaging and signaling in C++

By Meeting C++ | Aug 20, 2015 07:53 AM | Tags: qt intermediate c++11 boost advanced

The 7th part of my series on writing applications in C++ using Qt and boost:

Messaging and Signaling in C++

by Jens Weller

From the article:

This time it is about how to notify one part of our application that something has happened somewhere else. I will start with Qt, as it brings with signals and slots a mechanism to do exactly that. But, as I have the goal not to use Qt mainly in the UI Layer, I will also look on how to notify other parts of the application, when things are changing.

CppCon 2015 hotels filling up

By Blog Staff | Aug 20, 2015 05:17 AM | Tags: None

cppcon-031.PNGIf you're registered for CppCon (or going to be), make sure you book your hotel soon. If you leave booking till the week before the conference it's likely you'll have to stay someplace a few miles away because downtown Bellevue is a popular spot in September and all hotels within reasonable walking distance of CppCon are expected to be fully booked by the time of the event.

Last year's CppCon was well attended, and registration is stronger this year. Three of the four CppCon hotel room blocks are now sold out. The final CppCon negotiated room rate block expires on Monday at noon PST.

The announcement:

Hotel Room Shortage Predicted

Book Now!

Our contacts at the official conference hotels are predicting that, like last year, all hotel rooms in Bellevue will be booked.

Currently three of our four hotel blocks are full. The Marriott still has some rooms that we’ve reserved for attendees. Originally they had agreed to hold these rooms (at a conference discounted rate) until this Friday, but they’ve agree to extend the deadline to Monday (August 24th) at noon (west coast time).

We strongly encourage anyone planning to attend this year’s conference to book your room right away.

ะก++ Hints

By Andrey Karpov | Aug 19, 2015 11:50 PM | Tags: hints c++ basics

Within the scope of this project, we publish 1 recommendation/tip on C and C++ programming every day, these tips containing concentrated information on techniques of using the C/C++ language in various situations, and including examples of incorrect and correct use from more than 200 open-source projects we have scanned.

C++ Hints

by PVS-Studio Team

From the hint:

Although the code is neat and easy-to-read, it didn't prevent the developers from overlooking the error. You can't stay focused when reading code like that because all you see is just similarly looking blocks and you can't help just quickly scanning through them. These similar blocks have most likely resulted from the programmer's desire to optimize the code as much as possible. He or she just "unrolled the loop" manually. I don't think it was a good idea in this case.

Object Oriented Programming without Inheritance - ECOOP 2015--Bjarne Stroustrup

By Adrien Hamelin | Aug 19, 2015 11:46 PM | Tags: intermediate

Here is the last talk from Bjarne Stroustrup:

Object Oriented Programming without Inheritance

by Bjarne Stroustrup

Abstract:

Object-oriented programming is often characterized as encapsulation plus polymorphism plus inheritance. The original Simula67 demonstrated that we could do without encapsulation and Kristen Nygaard insisted that some OOP could be done without inheritance. I present generic programming as providing encapsulation plus polymorphism. In C++, this view is directly supported by language facilities, such as classes, templates and (only recently) concepts. I show a range of type-and-resource-safe techniques covering a wide range of applications including containers, algebraic concepts, and numerical and non-numerical algorithms.

CppCon 2015 Program Highlights, 3 of N

By Adrien Hamelin | Aug 19, 2015 09:00 AM | Tags: None

The CppCon 2015 conference program has been posted for the upcoming September conference. We’ve received requests that the program continue to be posted in “bite-sized” posts, a few sessions at a time, to make the 100+ sessions easier to absorb, so here is another set of talks. This series of posts will conclude once the entire conference program has been posted in this way.

 

The C++ possess another language inside it: the template language. It is useful for a lot of things, from writting less code to compile time computations or checks, but can lengthen compile time too. To master it is not easy.

The following interrelated CppCon 2015 talks tackle these issues and more (part 1).

In this post:

  • Expression Templates - What, Why, When, Where
  • Visualizing Template Instantiations - Templator Demo
  • Variadic Templates - Guidelines, Examples and Compile-time computation
  • Variable Templates - C++14 compile-time computation
  • How I stopped worrying and love metaprogramming

 

Expression Templates - What, Why, When, Where - Part I, Part II, Part III

Expression Templates is one of this C++ idiom people learn to either love or hate. The main issues with ET is that everubody has its own conception about what they are, when they should be used, what benefits they give and what are their trade off. For a long time, Expression Tempaltes has been seen has a way to improve temporary heavy code. If the seminal implementation of ET by Todd Veldhuizen was actually about this, the landscape has changed since C++11 and C++14.

This workshop will go over : - what are exactly Expression Templates and what kind of use case they can solve elegantly and efficiently - what are the benefits that one may reap by using expression tempalte in its library - what are the real cost of expressont empaltes both at runtime and compile-time - which tools to use to not reinvent the tempalte wheel everytime including an introduction to Boost.PROTO an Boost.HANA.

The main objective is to clarify why, even in C++1*, this idiom has a meaningful set of applciations and how to navigate around its pitfalls.


Visualizing Template Instantiations - Templator Demo

Many C++ beginners shy away from employing templates in their code, because of the myth of templates being hard. Even seasoned C++ developers can have problems manually interpreting template code correctly as Olve Maudal's C++ pub quiz demonstrates. Overloads and template specializations make it hard for programmers and also IDEs to show a developer what happens without compiling a program and even with a compile one might not get, what actually happens unless an unintelligible error message from your compiler appears.

My students tried to alleviate that problem by visualizing template instantiation and overload selection in a C++ IDE and allow to navigate through template code in instantiation context that a compiler would only create internally and that is otherwise not available for humans. While still in its nascent state I hope to show what is possible and if things go as planned at the time of the submission you should be able to solve the template pub quiz questions without running the programs.


Variadic Templates - Guidelines, Examples and Compile-time computation

Writing class templates and functions accepting a variable number of arguments has been a burden before C++11. With variadic templates, both class templates with a variable number of arguments as well as functions can be formulated much easier and more type safe way.

Nevertheless, the authoring of variadic templates can be challenging for the uninitiated. Even the interpretation of variadic template code can be a problem, as Olve Maudal's famous pub quiz shows.

This session will build up understanding and the ability to use and author variadic template functions and variadic template classes from easy examples up to more complicated applications such as employing std::forward correctly, std::integer_sequence and other upcoming language features such as a template UDL operator that bridges the gap between string literals and std::integer_sequence.

Understanding pack expansion, sizeof... and other hard to get on first sight issues are my goal. In the end you should have seen guidelines that help you avoid the template instantiation trap from the pub quiz and correct usage of std::forward in your variadic templates.


Variable Templates - C++14 compile-time computation

C++11 introduced Variadic Templates, constexpr Functions and Literal Types that ease and allow type-safe computations at compile time. For embedded development this is an important aspect, because it provides a means to create ROMable data in type-safe C++.

In combination with C++14 mechanism of Variable Templates, that actually defines constants, and the relaxed constexpr function rules there are unprecedented possibilities for compile-time computations.

This talk does not only show the mechanisms available but also demonstrates non-trivial examples, how they can be used to compute interesting data at compile time.


How I stopped worrying and love metaprogramming

Horrible software engineering technique conceived in the forge of Hell or the Only True Way of doing C++ in 2015, template metaprogramming and its cohort of companion techniques are sure to create animation in a group of programmers.

What if we were to tell you that an actual software product, actually sold to real customers and in production for now several years has been built on it? What if we were to tell you that a lot of advanced template techniques helped us to build a better software faster?

This talk is all about real life examples of template metaprogramming, why they are useful and when and how you could use them in your own projects.