Programming Conversations Lecture Series -- Alexander Stepanov

By Mantosh Kumar | Apr 22, 2014 09:53 AM | Tags: intermediate

Yet again the wonderful ongoing video series from Alexander Stepanov and Paramjit Oberoi (A9 Organization):

Programming Conversations

Programming conversations is intended as an interactive course on programming. We'll try to practice the Socratic method: eventually there will be very little lecturing, and most of the time will be spent in discussions and in writing code together. We plan to cover a wide variety of topics, starting with the nature of programming, and continuing, in no particular order, with benchmarking, algorithms, data structures, caches, instruction level parallelism, generic programming, variable sized types, and Platonic ideas.

Most of the concepts are explained in terms of C++11/STL/Boost.

Source code is available.

CS 251: Intermediate Software Design in C++ -- Doug Schmidt

By Blog Staff | Apr 17, 2014 05:22 AM | Tags: patterns intermediate basics

Doug Schmidt's C++-based software design course is available on YouTube.:

CS 251: Intermediate Software Design in C++

by Douglas Schmidt

This video playlist contains screencasts from a course I'm teaching on advanced C++ and object-oriented patterns/frameworks in the Spring of 2014 at Vanderbilt University. Please see http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/cs251/ for more information on this course.

Topics covered include:

• Overview of C++ (3 lectures)
• Overview of Subversion
• Overview of the STL (8 lectures)
• Overview of Patterns (2 lectures)
• A Case Study of "Gang-of-Four" Patterns (8 lectures)

About the instructor:

Douglas C. Schmidt is a Professor of Computer Science, Associate Chair of the Computer Science and Engineering program, and a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, all at Vanderbilt University. He has also been the Chief Technology Officer for the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was responsible for directing the technical vision and strategic R&D investments.

C++ developers will know of Doug particularly because of his widely-acclaimed ACE and related libraries.

Native Code Performance on Modern CPUs: A Changing Landscape -- Eric Brumer

By Blog Staff | Apr 7, 2014 02:55 AM | Tags: performance efficiency advanced

This C++ optimization talk is one of the highest-rated talks from last week's //build/ conference, and deservedly so.

Be prepared for deep content from a compiler optimizer architect, and quite a bit of subtle dry humor.

Native Code Performance on Modern CPUs: A Changing Landscape

by Eric Brumer
Compiler developer, Visual C++ team

Modern CPUs are fast. Really fast. New instructions, wider vector registers, and more powerful CPUs promise faster code. But reasoning about performance is not as it seems on the surface. This talk will dive deep into how advancements in the latest chips force some rethinking of native code performance, from the point of view of a compiler developer. The performance landscape is changing. Come see what that means.

Modern C++: What You Need to Know -- Herb Sutter

By Blog Staff | Apr 4, 2014 11:09 AM | Tags: performance intermediate efficiency basics

A recording of yesterday's //build/ talk by Herb Sutter is now available on Channel 9:

Modern C++: What You Need to Know

by Herb Sutter

This talk will give an update on recent progress and near-future directions for C++, both at Microsoft and across the industry. This is a great introduction to the current state of the language, including a glimpse into the future of general purpose, performance-intensive, power-friendly, powerful native programming.

From the advance description on Herb's blog:

I was asked to give a "foundational talk" about C++, and I decided that meant I should focus on addressing two questions that I get a lot these days:

• FAQ #1 (1-2 slides): When should I use C++ compared to another language -- on all platforms in general, and on Microsoft platforms in particular?
• FAQ #2 (lots of slides): What should I know about C++ if I’m a {Java|C#|JavaScript|Python|...} developer?

Even if you're a seasoned C++ developer, there are some nuggets and data points in the middle of the talk that I think you will find useful in your own work...

C++ in the 21st Century -- Arvid Norberg

By Blog Staff | Mar 31, 2014 10:17 PM | Tags: intermediate c++11 basics

A recently posted talk by BitTorrent's chief architect:

C++ in the 21st Century

by Arvid Norberg

From the announcement:

In this edition of Tech Talks: an overview of some C++ gems. I threw this talk together because my team was about to start a new project in C++11. Since it’s fairly new, I figured some of it might not be as well-known as it should. Fundamentally, I’m pretty excited about all the new possibilities in C++11. Even higher-level abstractions, at even lower cost than C++98.

In the video below, we go over for-loops, automatic type deduction, lambda functions and more.

C++: The Good Parts -- Jordan DeLong

By Blog Staff | Mar 11, 2014 01:06 PM | Tags: intermediate functional concepts c++14 c++11

A fun(ctional) talk from QCon:

C++: The Good Parts (slides)

by Jordan DeLong

The talk abstract:

Although C++ originated with the primary aim of adding Object Oriented features to C, it has evolved from the OO paradigm into a multi-paradigm language with strong support for various functional programming idioms.   C++11 adds several language features, most notably lambda expressions, that are overtly functional. But even prior to C++11, key parts of the standard library sported a design that has fundamentally more in common with functional programming than with OO.   This talk gives an overview of the past, current and near future "good parts" of C++'s functional side, through the colored lens of the speaker's biases.

Dive into C++11 (#4) — Smart pointers

By Vittorio Romeo | Jan 6, 2014 02:48 AM | Tags: intermediate

Hello once more isocpp users, I’m Vittorio Romeo, a computer science student, hobbyist game developer and C++ enthusiast.

I’ve uploaded the fourth episode of “Dive into C++11” on my YouTube channel.

After looking at C and C++'s memory and lifetime management in part 3, we'll take a brief look at C++11 smart pointers. We will learn what they are, what problem they solve, their advantages and their uses.

The intended audience for this tutorial/screencast are people who have some experience with C++ in general, and who watched the previous episodes. This episode may be very interesting for those with experience with C++ who want to learn more about variable lifetime and memory management.

I greatly appreciate comments and criticism, and ideas for future videos/tutorials.

Feel free to fork/analyze the source code at: https://github.com/SuperV1234/Tutorials

You can find the previous episodes here:

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Playlist

Thanks for watching!

Dive into C++11 (#3)—Automatic lifetime, pointers, dynamic allocation

By Vittorio Romeo | Dec 19, 2013 01:36 PM | Tags: intermediate

[Note: Automatic lifetime is indeed the right default -- correct and efficient. When you need to use the heap, however, note that you should now use unique_ptr (or if necessary shared_ptr via make_shared) instead of explicit new and delete. -- Ed.]

Hello again, I’m Vittorio Romeo, a computer science student, hobbyist game developer and C++ enthusiast.

I’ve uploaded the third episode of “Dive into C++11” on my YouTube channel.

In this episode we'll take a break from game development to delve into C and C++'s memory and lifetime management.

We'll talk about automatic variable lifetime, pointers in general and dynamic memory allocation.

The intended audience for this tutorial/screencast are people who have some experience with C++ in general, and who watched the previous episodes. This episode may be very interesting for those with experience with C++ who want to learn more about variable lifetime and memory management.

I greatly appreciate comments and criticism, and ideas for future videos/tutorials.

Feel free to fork/analyze the source code at: https://github.com/SuperV1234/Tutorials

You can find the previous episodes here:

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Playlist

Dive into C++11 (#2) -- Frametime/FPS, constexpr, uniform initialization, and more

By Vittorio Romeo | Dec 3, 2013 03:59 AM | Tags: intermediate basics

Hello again, I’m Vittorio Romeo, a computer science student, hobbyist game developer and C++ enthusiast.

I've uploaded the second episode of "Dive into C++11" on my YouTube channel. You can find the first episode here.

You can find the complete playlist here.

In this episode we will learn more about two previously mentioned new awesome C++11 features: "constexpr" and "uniform initialization syntax".

Most importantly, we will also deal with a very big issue that every game developer must face: FPS/frametime, and how to avoid the game from behaving differently on slower/faster machines.

In addition, we'll also briefly learn about "const-correctness" and using the "noexcept" keyword.

We will analyze the "time-slice" method to allow the game to run smoothly and consistently on every machine.

In the last code segment, we will also "refactor" our code by creating a `Game` class, making our source much easier to read and maintain.

I greatly appreciate comments and criticism, and ideas for future videos/tutorials.

Feel free to fork the game's source code at: https://github.com/SuperV1234/Tutorials

Dive into C++11 -- Arkanoid clone in 160 lines of code (SFML2)

By Vittorio Romeo | Nov 25, 2013 11:00 AM | Tags: sfml basics

I'm Vittorio Romeo, a computer science student, hobbyist game developer and C++ enthusiast.

I've created a 40 minute tutorial/screencast on the creation of a complete game using C++11 and SFML2. The end result is a playable Arkanoid/Breakout clone with a paddle, a ball and destroyable bricks.

I divided the code in 9 segments, that I analyze and execute individually.

The point of the video is showing how easy it is to create something playable thanks to the C++11 standard, and to show a possible train of thought that can be taken during game development.

I greatly appreciate comments and criticism, and ideas for future videos/tutorials.

Also, feel free to fork the game's source code here: https://github.com/SuperV1234/Tutorials

If the idea catches on, I'd love to make a video featuring the best forks.

Thanks for watching!