Reflecting C++

by Axel Naumann

What do you use to not get lost in a new city? A map! Some of today's C++ code is as complex as a metropolis, but mapping it still relies on tools to generate descriptions. Wouldn't it be nice to query C++ code from within C++? To answer questions like "which members do you have?" and "what is your type"? That's what reflection is about. This presentation will introduce the magic of the meta land, the features that open up with reflection in your hand.

In your hand? Yes: a first Reflection TS is scheduled to be published in 2019. In parallel the C++ committee is investing a lot of work in making the interfaces nicer, by making it stdlib's first constexpr library. As one of the Reflection TS authors, I will give you a quick tour of where we are and where it is we are going - which is relevant for any library that wants to live in compile-time space.

Axel Naumann (CERN) graduated as an experimental high energy / particle physicist. After a couple of years in The Netherlands and the US, he is now working at CERN, where he is leading the ROOT project https://root.cern, used by tens of thousands of physicists (and others) with varying coding expertise, to analyze about 1 exabytes of serialized C++ data - all in C++, with dynamic Python bindings. Since 2011, Axel is CERN's representative at the ISO C++ committee. Examples of past presentations include talks at 33C3, ACCU and a Google Tech Talk, as well as lectures and trainings.

Will we see C++ standard linear algebra in AAA games?

by Guy Davidson

C++ is getting ready to learn linear algebra. Guy Davidson and Bob Steagall are leading a proposal to introduce vector and matrix types to the standard library. This talk will take a whirlwind tour through the study of linear algebra, the new proposed types and functions, and consider their use in the low-latency games development environment.

Guy Davidson (Creative Assembly) has been writing games for nearly 40 years and has not grown tired of it. He is the Principal Coding Manager at Creative Assembly, makers of the Total War franchise, Alien:Isolation and Halo Wars 2.

C++ Core Guidelines: The Standard Library

by Rainer Grimm

Curiously, there is no section to the algorithms of the standard template library (STL) in this chapter. Curiously, because there is a proverb in the C++ community: If you write an explicit loop, you don't know the algorithms of the STL. Anyway. Only for completeness, let me start with the first three rules which provide not much beef...

Text Formatting for a future range based standard library 

by Arno Schödl

In this talk, I want to convince you that the combination of ranges with a bit of metaprogramming makes for a very elegant solution to the text formatting problem. We introduce a form of ranges with internal iteration, which are generating their elements one by one rather than exposing external iterators. We can use these generator ranges to represent the values to be formatted, conceptually turning them into lazily evaluated strings. These can be used just like regular strings are used today: in function returns; as standard algorithm input; embedded into other, equally lazily evaluated strings; and so on, before they are finally expanded for display.

Dr. Arno Schödl (Think-Cell) is the Co-Founder and Technical Director of think-cell Software GmbH. Arno is responsible for the design, architecture and development of all our software products. He oversees think-cell's R&D team, Quality Assurance and Customer Care. Before founding think-cell, Arno worked at Microsoft Research and McKinsey & Company. Arno studied computer science and management and holds a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a specialization on Computer Graphics.

Let’s make easy to use libraries

by Martin Knoblauch

We often use libraries with annoying, error prone interfaces. The main cause is the potential incompatibility between the library and the program using it, due to being compiled with different compiler versions or settings. Another well known issue is the usage of separated heaps by the program and the library in Windows. These problems can be solved (at a very high cost!) by using pure C interfaces and/or the Hourglass Pattern. In this talk I propose designing interfaces using a selected set of C++ features that should be very unlikely to cause ABI incompatibilities. I will focus on the usage of std::unique_ptr with custom deleters to manage the lifetime of objects passed through the library interface, thus making life easier for both the library implementor and the library user. Needless to say, a full Hourglass Pattern interface can also benefit from using std::unique_ptr.

Martin Knoblauch (Indizen). Fiddling with computers since the mid 80's, passionate about C++ since the 90's, C and C++ lecturer in the 00's. At Indizen since 2014. Member of the Spanish C++ Standards Committee.

Trip report from using std::cpp 2019 in Madrid

by Daniel Garcia

As many other years roughly 200 participants attended the conference. Most of the attendees were coming from industry.

This trip report contains some statistics from the evaluation forms at the conference including standards adoption and compilers usage.

Report from using std::cpp 2019

On March, 7th, we had the sixth edition of using std::cpp (the C++ conference in Spain). The conference was again a on-day free event, and as every other year it was hosted at the Higher Polytechnic School of University Carlos III of Madrid in Leganés.

As many other years roughly 200 participants attended the conference. Most of the attendees were coming from industry...

C++17 STL Parallel Algorithms - with GCC 9.1 and Intel TBB on Linux and macOS

by Paul Silisteanu

GCC 9.1 has support for C++17 parallel algorithms by using the Intel TBB library. In this article, I will show you how to build Intel TBB from sources on your machine and how to sort a vector of random numbers in parallel using C++17 std::sort...

CppCast Episode 198: Mutation Testing with Mull with Alex Denisov

by Rob Irving and Jason Turner

Alex is a Software Engineer who is working at PTScientists GmbH, a German aerospace startup that is planning to land a spacecraft on the Moon. After work, he is organizing LLVM Social in Berlin and researching the topic of mutation testing. He is generally interested in developer tools, low-level development, and software hardening.

ACCU Trip report

by Kate Gregory

In early April I was lucky enough to go to Bristol in the UK for the annual ACCU conference. This has been an aspirational conference for me, one I attended before speaking at and am always delighted to attend. This year I was invited to keynote, and it turned out to be the closing keynote, which meant I was not done with all my talks until the conference was over! Nevertheless I enjoyed the week tremendously...