CppCon 2019: There Are No Zero-cost Abstractions--Chandler Carruth

By Adrien Hamelin | Jul 29, 2020 08:00 PM | Tags: community

This year, CppCon 2020 is going virtual. The dates are still the same – September 14-18 – and we are aiming for the CppCon live event to have pretty much everything you’re familiar with at CppCon except moved online: multiple tracks including “back to basics” and a new “embedded” track; live speaker Q&A; live talk time zones friendly to Americas and EMEA (and we’re going to try to arrange around-the-clock recorded repeats in all time zones, where speakers who are available can be available for live Q&A in their repeated talks too, and we’ll do that if it’s possible – but we’re still working on it!); virtual tables where you can interact face-to-face online with other attendees just like at the physical event; virtual exhibitor spaces where you can meet the folks on your favorite product’s teams to ask them question face-to-face; pre- and post-conference classes; and even the CppCon house band playing live before every plenary session. All talk recordings will be freely available as usual on YouTube a month or two after the event, but everything else above will be available only live during CppCon week.

To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, here’s another of the top-rated talks from last year. Enjoy – and register today for CppCon 2020 – all the spirit and flavor of CppCon, this year all virtual and online!

There Are No Zero-cost Abstractions

by Chandler Carruth

Summary of the talk:

C++ is often described as providing zero-cost abstractions. Libraries offer up facilities documented as such. And of course, users read all of these advertisements and believe that the abstractions they are using are truly zero-cost.

Sadly, there is no truth in advertising here, and there are no zero-cost abstractions.

This talk will dive into what we mean by "zero-cost abstractions", and explain why it is at best misleading and at worst completely wrong to describe libraries this way. It will show case studies of where this has led to significant problems in practice as libraries are designed or used in unscalable and unsustainable ways. Finally, it will suggest a different framing and approach for discussing abstraction costs in modern C++ software.

CppCon 2019: Converting to C++20 Modules-Nathan Sidwell

By Adrien Hamelin | Jul 27, 2020 08:00 PM | Tags: community

This year, CppCon 2020 is going virtual. The dates are still the same – September 14-18 – and we are aiming for the CppCon live event to have pretty much everything you’re familiar with at CppCon except moved online: multiple tracks including “back to basics” and a new “embedded” track; live speaker Q&A; live talk time zones friendly to Americas and EMEA (and we’re going to try to arrange around-the-clock recorded repeats in all time zones, where speakers who are available can be available for live Q&A in their repeated talks too, and we’ll do that if it’s possible – but we’re still working on it!); virtual tables where you can interact face-to-face online with other attendees just like at the physical event; virtual exhibitor spaces where you can meet the folks on your favorite product’s teams to ask them question face-to-face; pre- and post-conference classes; and even the CppCon house band playing live before every plenary session. All talk recordings will be freely available as usual on YouTube a month or two after the event, but everything else above will be available only live during CppCon week.

To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, here’s another of the top-rated talks from last year. Enjoy – and register today for CppCon 2020 – all the spirit and flavor of CppCon, this year all virtual and online!

Converting to C++20 Modules

by Nathan Sidwell

Summary of the talk:

C++20 will have a module system, which provides benefits beyond simple code hygiene. C++20 modules uses new keywords and explicit source-level annotations. How do we get there from here?

I have been implementing this in the GNU compiler, and will talk about the broad strokes of the module specification.
I will describe how:
* one may incrementally convert source code,
* build systems might be augmented,

CppCon 2019: Maintainability and Refactoring Impact of Higher-Level Design Features--Titus Winters

By Adrien Hamelin | Jul 24, 2020 01:59 PM | Tags: community

This year, CppCon 2020 is going virtual. The dates are still the same – September 14-18 – and we are aiming for the CppCon live event to have pretty much everything you’re familiar with at CppCon except moved online: multiple tracks including “back to basics” and a new “embedded” track; live speaker Q&A; live talk time zones friendly to Americas and EMEA (and we’re going to try to arrange around-the-clock recorded repeats in all time zones, where speakers who are available can be available for live Q&A in their repeated talks too, and we’ll do that if it’s possible – but we’re still working on it!); virtual tables where you can interact face-to-face online with other attendees just like at the physical event; virtual exhibitor spaces where you can meet the folks on your favorite product’s teams to ask them question face-to-face; pre- and post-conference classes; and even the CppCon house band playing live before every plenary session. All talk recordings will be freely available as usual on YouTube a month or two after the event, but everything else above will be available only live during CppCon week.

To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, here’s another of the top-rated talks from last year. Enjoy – and register today for CppCon 2020 – all the spirit and flavor of CppCon, this year all virtual and online!

Maintainability and Refactoring Impact of Higher-Level Design Features

by Titus Winters

Summary of the talk:

Higher levels of abstraction are useful for building things out of, but also have a higher cognitive and maintenance cost. That is, it's a lot easier to refactor a function than it is to change a type, and similarly easier to deal with a single concrete type than a class template, or a Concept, or a meta-Concept ... In this talk I'll present example strategies for refactoring the interface of functions, classes, and class templates. I'll also discuss how the recent addition of Concepts and the proposals for even-more-abstract features affect long-term refactoring in C++. If you're interested in refactoring and it isn't immediately clear that a Concept published in a library can never change, this talk is for you.

CppCon 2019: Back to Basics: Const as a Promise--Dan Saks

By Adrien Hamelin | Jul 22, 2020 11:13 AM | Tags: community

This year, CppCon 2020 is going virtual. The dates are still the same – September 14-18 – and we are aiming for the CppCon live event to have pretty much everything you’re familiar with at CppCon except moved online: multiple tracks including “back to basics” and a new “embedded” track; live speaker Q&A; live talk time zones friendly to Americas and EMEA (and we’re going to try to arrange around-the-clock recorded repeats in all time zones, where speakers who are available can be available for live Q&A in their repeated talks too, and we’ll do that if it’s possible – but we’re still working on it!); virtual tables where you can interact face-to-face online with other attendees just like at the physical event; virtual exhibitor spaces where you can meet the folks on your favorite product’s teams to ask them question face-to-face; pre- and post-conference classes; and even the CppCon house band playing live before every plenary session. All talk recordings will be freely available as usual on YouTube a month or two after the event, but everything else above will be available only live during CppCon week.

To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, here’s another of the top-rated talks from last year. Enjoy – and register today for CppCon 2020 – all the spirit and flavor of CppCon, this year all virtual and online!

Back to Basics: Const as a Promise

by Dan Saks

Summary of the talk:

The const qualifier has various uses in C++. One of the most valuable uses is in declaring function headings that constrain the effects of function calls. Using const appropriately can reduce bugs and development time by turning potential run-time errors into compile-time errors that are much easier to find and correct. Using const can even reduce your program’s code size and execution time.

Despite these benefits, too many C++ programmers still use const reactively rather than proactively. That is, they tend to add const as needed to quell compiler error messages, rather than design const in as they code. To get the most out of const, programmers really need to understand (1) when and where to place const in declarations, (2) when to leave it out entirely, and (3) how type conversions involving const behave.

The key insight about const is to understand const as a promise—a promise not to modify something. This session explains the real meaning of that promise and how that insight can guide you in declaring function parameters and return types. It also explains why you shouldn’t declare by-value parameters and return types as const, why overloading on const is such a useful and ubiquitous idiom, and why it is meaningful to declare constexpr member functions as const.

CopperSpice: A Guide to Maps

By Ansel Sermersheim | Jul 22, 2020 09:44 AM | Tags: None

New video on the CopperSpice YouTube Channel:

A Guide to Maps

by Barbara Geller and Ansel Sermersheim

About the video:

This video discusses the various types of C++ maps including the standard library containers and the new flatmap class available in third party libraries. We look at the underlying data structures so you can reason about picking the right one for your application, and talk about the various considerations that are involved in this choice.

Please take a look and remember to subscribe!

CppCon 2019: Range Algorithms, Views and Actions: A Comprehensive Guide--Dvir Yitzchaki

By Adrien Hamelin | Jul 20, 2020 09:33 AM | Tags: None

This year, CppCon 2020 is going virtual. The dates are still the same – September 14-18 – and we are aiming for the CppCon live event to have pretty much everything you’re familiar with at CppCon except moved online: multiple tracks including “back to basics” and a new “embedded” track; live speaker Q&A; live talk time zones friendly to Americas and EMEA (and we’re going to try to arrange around-the-clock recorded repeats in all time zones, where speakers who are available can be available for live Q&A in their repeated talks too, and we’ll do that if it’s possible – but we’re still working on it!); virtual tables where you can interact face-to-face online with other attendees just like at the physical event; virtual exhibitor spaces where you can meet the folks on your favorite product’s teams to ask them question face-to-face; pre- and post-conference classes; and even the CppCon house band playing live before every plenary session. All talk recordings will be freely available as usual on YouTube a month or two after the event, but everything else above will be available only live during CppCon week.

To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, here’s another of the top-rated talks from last year. Enjoy – and register today for CppCon 2020 – all the spirit and flavor of CppCon, this year all virtual and online!

Range Algorithms, Views and Actions: A Comprehensive Guide

by Dvir Yitzchaki

Summary of the talk:

STL algorithms are something every C++ programmer should know. With ranges being voted in C++ 20, there are even more useful tools that we should at least be aware of, if not use daily.

Using ranges helps writing a code which is great in expressiveness and safety and does not fall behind in performance. In this talk we will cover what ranges add to the C++20 standard library, as well as go over all the different views and actions available in range-v3 library which can be used today.

This talk is inspired by Jonathan Boccara’s talk "105 algorithms in less than an hour".

CppCon 2019: C++20: C++ at 40--Bjarne Stroustrup

By Adrien Hamelin | Jul 17, 2020 11:43 AM | Tags: community

This year, CppCon 2020 is going virtual. The dates are still the same – September 14-18 – and we are aiming for the CppCon live event to have pretty much everything you’re familiar with at CppCon except moved online: multiple tracks including “back to basics” and a new “embedded” track; live speaker Q&A; live talk time zones friendly to Americas and EMEA (and we’re going to try to arrange around-the-clock recorded repeats in all time zones, where speakers who are available can be available for live Q&A in their repeated talks too, and we’ll do that if it’s possible – but we’re still working on it!); virtual tables where you can interact face-to-face online with other attendees just like at the physical event; virtual exhibitor spaces where you can meet the folks on your favorite product’s teams to ask them question face-to-face; pre- and post-conference classes; and even the CppCon house band playing live before every plenary session. All talk recordings will be freely available as usual on YouTube a month or two after the event, but everything else above will be available only live during CppCon week.

To whet your appetite for this year’s conference, here’s another of the top-rated talks from last year. Enjoy – and register today for CppCon 2020 – all the spirit and flavor of CppCon, this year all virtual and online!

C++20: C++ at 40

by Bjarne Stroustrup

Summary of the talk:

It is now 40 years since C++ (then called C with Classes) had its first non-research user. It is now 35 years since the first commercial release of C++. It is now 30 years since the start of the standards process.

So what is C++? I will try to explain what's great about C++, C++20, as a modern language, not treating it as a layer cake of features. Imagine you have never heard of C, C with Classes, or C++11. How do classes, templates, and lambdas fit together? What have constructors and destructors to do with exceptions? What's in the standard library? How can we start using C++?

Finally, I will make a few comments about how to get from older styles of C++ use to modern C++ and point to areas where we need to improve C++ further.

C++ on Sea : Full schedule, Nico Josuttis Keynote and Remo as a platform

By philsquared | Jul 8, 2020 11:00 AM | Tags: None

With less than two weeks to go before the conference (in fact only one week before the first workshop), we have some big announcements!

CopperSpice: Copy Elision

By Ansel Sermersheim | Jun 23, 2020 01:02 PM | Tags: None

New video on the CopperSpice YouTube Channel:

Copy Elision

by Barbara Geller and Ansel Sermersheim

About the video:

In this video, we look at what copy elision is, and in the process define elision and what it means to copy. We also talk about why you would want to elide copies, and why this feature needed explicit permission in the standard.

Please take a look and remember to subscribe!

Modules Present and Future--CppCast

By Adrien Hamelin | Jun 23, 2020 10:54 AM | Tags: c++20

It will change things.

Modules Present and Future

by CppCast

From the article:

Rob and Jason are joined by Gabriel Dos Reis from Microsoft. They first discuss the recent articles about Microsoft switching from C++ to Rust and let Gaby set the record straight. Then Gaby talks about the final state of Modules, how Microsoft is using them internally, and Gaby’s plans for the future of Modules and much more.