October 25, Pavia, Italy
November 6-8, Berlin, Germany
November 3-8, Kona, HI, USA
By aleph7 | May 7, 2015 12:08 AM | Tags: community c++14 c++11 basics
This workshop is an introduction to new features and best practices of modern C++. We will delve into the core of C++ and all new features introduced in C++11 and C++14.
Introduction to Modern C++ Workshop happening at Polyglot Unconference 2015 in Vancouver, BC.
by Alejandro Isaza
From the workshop summary:
- Write C++ code using the latest language features while following the best practices
- Use third-party libraries and frameworks
By Adrien Hamelin | May 6, 2015 08:00 AM | Tags: performance efficiency
While we wait for CppCon 2015 in September, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2014. Here is today’s feature:
Optimization Tips - Mo' Hustle Mo' Problems
by Andrei Alexandrescu
Summary of the talk:
Reasonably-written C++ code will be naturally fast. This is to C++'s excellent low-penalty abstractions and a memory model close to the machine.
However, a large category of applications have no boundaries on desired speed, meaning there's no point of diminishing returns in making code faster. Better speed means less power consumed for the same work, more workload with the same data center expense, better features for the end user, more features for machine learning, better analytics, and more.
Optimizing has always been an art, and in particular optimizing C++ on contemporary hardware has become a task of formidable complexity. This is because modern hardware has a few peculiarities about it that are not sufficiently understood and explored. This talk discusses a few such effects, and guides the attendee on how to navigate design and implementation options in search for better performance.
By Marco Arena | May 5, 2015 02:01 PM | Tags: None
From the Visual C++ Porting and Upgrading Guide (referring to Visual Studio 2015 RC):
Breaking Changes in Visual C++
by Microsoft
From the article:
When you upgrade to a new version of the Visual C++ compiler, you might encounter compilation and/or runtime errors in code that previously compiled and ran correctly...
By Blog Staff | May 5, 2015 06:59 AM | Tags: None
A new O'Reilly book from two well-known C++ community experts, freely available courtesy of the makers of CLion:
C++ Today: The Beast Is Back
by Jon Kalb and Gašper Ažman
From the announcement:
Now that software development is shifting primarily toward mobile and cloud computing, the venerable C++ programming language is returning to the dominant position it held during the object-oriented boom of the 1990s. In this O′Reilly report, you′ll learn why C++ is once again the preferred choice across several diverse industries...
Table of contents:
Preface
1. The Nature of the Beast
C++: What’s It Good For?
2. The Origin Story
C: Portable Assembler
C with High-Level Abstractions
The ’90s: The OOP Boom, and a Beast Is Born
The 2000s: Java, the Web, and the Beast Nods Off
3. The Beast Wakes
Technology Evolution: Performance Still Matters
Language Evolution: Modernizing C++
Tools Evolution: The Clang Toolkit
Library Evolution: The Open Source Advantage
4. The Beast Roars Back
WG21
Tools
Standard C++ Foundation
Boost: A Library and Organization
Q&A
Conferences and Groups
Videos
CppCast
Books
5. Digging Deep on Modern C++
Type Inference: Auto and Decltype
How Move Semantics Support Value-Semantic and Functional Programming
No More Output Parameters
Inner Functions with Lambdas
Lambdas as a Scope with a Return Value
6. The Future of C++
Setting the Standard
Never Make Predictions, Especially About the Future
Bibliography
By Blog Staff | May 5, 2015 06:36 AM | Tags: None
This just in:
C/C++ SonarQube plugin based on Clang is out
by CoderGears team
From the article:
SonarQube is is an open platform to manage the code quality...
The big challenge to develop a sonar plugin for C/C++ is to use the good parser...
The C/C++ SonarQube plugin based on Clang and CppDepend is just released, it’s free for open source contributors and for universities.
By Herb Sutter | May 4, 2015 08:06 PM | Tags: None
Most of the following announcement will not immediately affect those who are not C++ standards committee members, but I hope everyone reading this blog who uses and relies on C++ will benefit from this new program.
I’m pleased to share that today at the ISO C++ meeting in Lenexa, Kansas, USA, the Standard C++ Foundation launched a new financial assistance policy intended to facilitate the work of WG21. You can find the policy here.
Before I mention details, let me thank two important groups without whose support this would not be possible:
Remember that the Foundation is not the committee, even though many people and companies participate in both. Rather, the Foundation exists to support the community and the work of the committee while leaving standardization strictly under the C++ committee leadership’s direction. For that reason, this policy leaves it up to the C++ committee leadership as to how the financial support should best be applied. Also, please note that this policy is experimental and subject to revision or withdrawal, but we hope it will be successful in facilitating the work of the committee as we develop the TSes, C++17, and beyond.
The basic idea is that the Foundation will set aside a chunk of money for each meeting, that the convener and main subgroup chairs can draw on to facilitate WG21 work, notably in three areas:
Note that both #2 and #3 are intended to directly help and foster community involvement beyond the big commercial corporations and academic/research institutions.
Recall: For much of the history of the C++ committee, we have had key participants who have made an enormous difference to C++ who have not been funded by a company, university, research lab, or other organization. Today, that hasn't changed: We continue to have some of our major proposals, including at least three large proposed libraries including Ranges (range-based STL using concepts), Networking (based on Boost.ASIO), and 2D Graphics (based on Cairo), that rely partly or entirely on the efforts of such individual world-class experts, and that have been developed to their current state by those experts’ unpaid volunteer efforts.
The committee has expressed strong interest in pursuing all of the three proposals I've just named, as well as others. However, nothing gets done unless someone can contribute sustained heavy work -- and because these key efforts are not funded by companies, some of these efforts likely cannot continue, and cannot be completed, without at least some assistance of the financial variety. We hope that the Foundation can help by starting to offer tactical travel assistance and grant funding for some of the costs of some of these kinds of contributors, so that we can help foster the work that the committee has declared an interest in, but that cannot progress without requiring some level of actual financial development assistance that would not happen if we relied on companies and other institutions alone.
Since the last November’s standards meeting in particular, the Foundation directors have been working on putting together this policy because the Foundation had already become involved in supporting all three of these categories of standards-related work, but it has been in ad-hoc and on-demand ways as situations have arisen.
For example, even before there was a policy, the Foundation funded work from which the standardization effort is already benefiting at this week's meeting: Without the first grant issued as an initial one-off grant over the winter even before this regular policy became official, we would not now have a 170-page document before us containing near-complete working draft text for applying concepts and ranges to the entire STL iterators and algorithms libraries, along with an open source reference implementation on GitHub – and we do have that and are considering it at this week’s standards meeting.
Since this has worked very well in the form of ad-hoc one-off support, the Foundation directors decided it was time to establish a structure to formalize and regularize this support, and test how well it works more broadly.
So now that we have a policy, what’s different? The answer is, not too much -- the Foundation still wants to support those same things, and this policy mainly gives a regular and consistent structure for doing that. One major difference is that going forward it will be, not just the Foundation’s CEO and directors, but the committee leadership -- the convener and the four main subgroup chairs -- who will decide and approve where the support should be allocated. The Foundation directors will set a budget of what we can contribute toward each meeting, and the committee leadership will decide how they want to use it to promote the work of that meeting. (Note that there is overlap between the Foundation directors and the WG21 leadership, and some of us wear two hats, but the policy is written to distinguish those roles and designed for the long term as the people in particular roles evolve over time.)
Again, this is experimental and subject to review based on how it goes. As we try this out together with the committee subgroup chairs between now and our next meeting in October, we’ll get a better feel together for how it will all work in practice.
Thank you again to the Standard C++ Foundation members at right who directly financially support the work of the Foundation including this initiative.
Thank you again to the CppCon attendees, and to the CppCon volunteers who contribute so much to the running of that conference to disseminate information and support the C++ community, because your support for CppCon feeds back into enabling things like this initiative.
Thank you again to the C++ committee members and leadership who work hard year after year to bring us modern Standard C++ at high quality.
Thank you all, dear readers, for all you do for Standard C++. The Foundation is glad to be able to try to provide some financial support for the good work of C++ standardization in key areas to promote the development of our Technical Specifications, C++17, and beyond, and we look forward with intense interest to see what future results these and other efforts may bring.
Herb
By Blog Staff | May 4, 2015 12:00 PM | Tags: None
A commentary on the C++17 directions being discussed today at the ISO C++ meeting in Kansas, USA:
The Annihilation of Conceptual Integrity
by Tony DaSilva
From the article:
When a large group or committee is tasked with designing a complex system from scratch, or evolving an existing one, I always think of these timeless quotes from Fred Brooks: ... “Who advocates ... for the product itself -- its conceptual integrity, its efficiency, its economy, its robustness? Often, no one.” – Fred Brooks
... Like all the other C++ committee members, Bjarne is a really, really, smart guy. For the decades that I’ve followed his efforts to evolve and improve the language, Bjarne has always expressed empathy for "the little people"; the 99% (of which I am a card-carrying member).
In a world in which the top 1% doesn’t seem to [care] about the remaining 99%, it’s always refreshing to encounter a 1 percenter who cares deeply about the other 99 percenters. And THAT, my dear reader, is what has always endeared Mr. Bjarne Stroustrup to me....
By Adrien Hamelin | May 4, 2015 08:02 AM | Tags: c++14 basics
Binary literals and digit separators
by Marius Bancila
From the article:
The C++14 standard provides two new small features to the language: binary literals and digit separators. They are already available in Clang 3.4 and GCC 4.9 and now Visual Studio 2015 RC has implemented them. They may not be something you can’t leave without, but sometimes it’s convenient to have them. Let’s have a look...
By Adrien Hamelin | May 4, 2015 08:00 AM | Tags: intermediate community
An interesting post on interesting librairies:
5 awesome C++ libraries we use
by Edouard
From the article:
This is an opinionated post about five libraries we use in the production code of quasardb.
We of course use many more great libraries (for example Boost.ASIO which is not listed here). Maybe those five libraries are not the most important, but I felt they deserved some special highlight as they are not so well-known or understood...
By Adrien Hamelin | May 4, 2015 07:59 AM | Tags: performance efficiency
While we wait for CppCon 2015 in September, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2014. Here is today’s feature:
Lock-Free Programming (or, Juggling Razor Blades), Part II
by Herb Sutter
Summary of the talk:
Example-driven talk on how to design and write lock-free algorithms and data structures using C++ atomic -- something that can look deceptively simple, but contains very deep topics. (Important note: This is not the same as my "atomic Weapons" talk; that talk was about the "what they are and why" of the C++ memory model and atomics, and did not cover how to actually use atomics to implement highly concurrent algorithms and data structures.)