CppCon 2014 What did C++ do for Transactional Memory?--Michael Wong

By Adrien Hamelin | Jun 8, 2015 09:03 AM | Tags: performance experimental

Have you registered for CppCon 2015 in September? Don’t delay – Early Bird registration is open now.

While we wait for this year’s event, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2014 for you to enjoy. Here is today’s feature:

What did C++ do for Transactional Memory?

by Michael Wong

(watch on YouTube) (watch on Channel 9)

Summary of the talk:

SG5 is a Study Group within WG21 developing a promising new way to deal with mutable shared memory, that is expected to be more usable and scalable than current techniques based on atomics and mutexes. It promises to be as easy to use as coarse-grained locks, as scalable as fine-grained locks and yet remain composable.

Find out where on the Gartner hype cycle lives Transactional Memory.
Is it at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, or Plateau of Productivity?

For that matter, just how soon will I be able to use it with the new Intel Haswell, and IBM Power Hardware, or is it one of those mirages where the closer you get to your hardware, the further it moves away.

And is it true that one of the lead author of this TM proposal also wrote "Is it just a Research Toy?"

This 60 minute advanced talk will cover the history of Transactional Memory, various lock elision and optimistic speculation techniques, the technical engine behind Transactional Memory, the recent research in its use cases, usability and performance data that supports its entry into the C++ Standard, and of course the latest details of the SG5 Technical Specification, including our effort at transactionalizing the C++ Standard Library.

CppCon 2014 Modern Template Metaprogramming: A Compendium, Part II--Walter E. Brown

By Adrien Hamelin | Jun 5, 2015 08:00 PM | Tags: intermediate experimental

Have you registered for CppCon 2015 in September? Don’t delay – Early Bird registration is open now.

While we wait for this year’s event, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2014 for you to enjoy. Here is today’s feature:

Modern Template Metaprogramming: A Compendium, Part II

by Walter E. Brown

(watch on YouTube) (watch on Channel 9)

Summary of the talk:

Template metaprogramming has become an important part of a C++ programmer's toolkit. This talk will demonstrate state-of-the-art metaprogramming techniques, applying each to obtain representative implementations of selected standard library facilities.

Along the way, we will look at void_t, a recently-proposed, extremely simple new new type_traits candidate whose use has been described by one expert as "highly advanced (and elegant), and surprising even to experienced template metaprogrammers."

Dive into C++14 - [1] - Introduction to C++14 core language features -- Vittorio Romeo

By Vittorio Romeo | Jun 5, 2015 12:06 AM | Tags: c++14

Vittorio Romeo continues his video tutorials with an introduction into the C++14 features.

Dive into C++14 - Part 1

by Vittorio Romeo

About the tutorial:

Like the previous series, it is dedicated to the C++11 standard, "Dive into C++14" will show the convenience and power of the latest standard (C++14) through videos regarding various topics.

The format of the videos is what makes "Dive into C++11" and "Dive into C++14" different from other tutorials: well-commented and well-formatted independently compilable chronologically sequential code segments will show the audience the thought process behind writing modern C++14 code.

The first video is a brief introduction to some of my favorite new C++14 core language features.
It covers the following topics, using code examples:

• Function return type deduction
• `decltype(auto)`
• Relaxed constexpr restrictions
• Variable templates
• Generic lambdas

The target audience is newcomers to the C++14 standard who already have some experience with C++11.

The code of the tuturial can be found here: https://github.com/SuperV1234/Tutorials

CppCast Episode 14: Better Code Concurrency with Sean Parent

By robwirving | Jun 4, 2015 11:42 PM | Tags: None

Episode 14 of CppCast the only podcast by C++ developers for C++ developers. In this episode Rob and Jason are joined by Sean Parent to talk about his recent C++Now! talk where he presented a new futures library.

CppCast Episode 14: Better Code Concurrency with Sean Parent

by Rob Irving and Jason Turner

About the interviewee:

Sean Parent is a principal scientist and software architect for Adobe’s mobile digital imaging group. Sean has been at Adobe since 1993 when he joined as a senior engineer working on Photoshop and later managed Adobe’s Software Technology Lab. In 2009 Sean spent a year at Google working on Chrome OS before returning to Adobe. From 1988 through 1993 Sean worked at Apple, where he was part of the system software team that developed the technologies allowing Apple’s successful transition to PowerPC.

CppCon 2014 Modern Template Metaprogramming: A Compendium, Part I--Walter E. Brown

By Adrien Hamelin | Jun 3, 2015 08:00 PM | Tags: intermediate experimental

Have you registered for CppCon 2015 in September? Don’t delay – Early Bird registration is open now.

While we wait for this year’s event, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2014 for you to enjoy. Here is today’s feature:

Modern Template Metaprogramming: A Compendium, Part I

by Walter E. Brown

(watch on YouTube) (watch on Channel 9)

Summary of the talk:

Template metaprogramming has become an important part of a C++ programmer's toolkit. This talk will demonstrate state-of-the-art metaprogramming techniques, applying each to obtain representative implementations of selected standard library facilities.

Along the way, we will look at void_t, a recently-proposed, extremely simple new new type_traits candidate whose use has been described by one expert as "highly advanced (and elegant), and surprising even to experienced template metaprogrammers."

CppCon 2014 Practical Functional Programming in C++--Bryce Adelstein-Lelbach

By Adrien Hamelin | Jun 1, 2015 08:09 AM | Tags: intermediate

Have you registered for CppCon 2015 in September? Don’t delay – Early Bird registration is open now.

While we wait for this year’s event, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2014 for you to enjoy. Here is today’s feature:

Practical Functional Programming in C++

by Bryce Adelstein-Lelbach

(watch on YouTube) (watch on Channel 9)

Summary of the talk:

To the untrained eye, pure functional programming may appear to be out of place in our traditionally imperative C++ world. However, the functional paradigm has become increasing prominent in production C++ codes, especially when implementing asynchronous execution.

This talk is intended as a primer for attendees who are either unfamiliar with functional programming or have doubts its practical uses in modern C++.

Examples from different sectors of industry/academia will be presented throughout.

No prior functional programming knowledge will be needed. While this talk will cover some theory, coverage of non-C++ programming languages will be minimal. The focus of this talk will be the application of theories from FP to C++, not FP itself.

GoingNative 38: The future of C++[17] - Updates from Lenexa--Gabriel Ha

By Adrien Hamelin | Jun 1, 2015 08:06 AM | Tags: intermediate experimental

A nice recapitulative video of what C++17 could be:

GoingNative 38: The future of C++[17] - Updates from Lenexa

by Gabriel Ha

From the video:

A few weeks ago, the ISO C++ Committee met in Lenexa, Kansas to hash out the future of the C++ language, specifically for C++17. We're honored to speak to two (previously featured) Microsoft delegates to the committee -- Gabriel "Gaby" Dos Reis and Artur Laksberg -- who took the time to give us a very nice overview of the major things that went down at the meeting!

CppCon 2014 Microsoft w/ C++ to Deliver Office Across Different Platforms, Part II—Zaika Antoun

By Adrien Hamelin | May 29, 2015 08:00 AM | Tags: performance efficiency

Have you registered for CppCon 2015 in September? Don’t delay – Early Bird registration is open now.

While we wait for this year’s event, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2014 for you to enjoy. Here is today’s feature:

Microsoft w/ C++ to Deliver Office Across Different Platforms, Part II

by Zaika Antoun

(watch on YouTube) (watch on Channel 9)

Summary of the talk:

What does it take to target multiple major mobile devices (as well as traditional environments) with portable, efficient, single-source code? This talk demonstrates architectures, techniques, and lessons learned rooted in actual experience with using C++ to deliver several major cross-platform projects across iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac: Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote) and the SQL Server PowerBI. Each presents a different case study: For example, Office already used C++, whereas PowerBI was originally written in Silverlight and then rewritten in C++; Office is a set of user-facing apps, whereas PowerBI is a system component. Although some of these are demanding first-tier “Cadillac” applications, we expect this experience to be a model for the future as more and more apps fall into this category and use C++ to target many popular platforms from (mostly) a single source base. This talk will cover the following key topics and tradeoffs: Rich vs. reach, including access to latest OS features (e.g., iOS 8 additions) and hardware features (e.g., vector units, GPUs). Consistency of functionality. Client code vs. server/service web code. Sharing vs. quality, including dialing appropriately between more shared code and high quality code. Drawing the line between the bulk of C++ code and interfacing with non-C++ for UX and PALs (platform adaptation/abstraction layers) for target-specific user interface and system services. Architecting PALs, including why “mini-PALs” rather than an “über-PAL.” Forces “doing the right thing” and good architecture with composable components. How C++ enables things not feasible using other technologies. Velocity and enabling faster cross-platform development and deployment. Cost of maintenance, including time, size, and complexity (both breadth and depth). And, last but not least, developing in a single modern C++ source base built with different evolving C++ compilers, including VC++ and Clang/LLVM.

CppCast Episode 13: Testdriven C++ using Catch with Phil Nash

By robwirving | May 27, 2015 11:52 PM | Tags: None

Episode 13 of CppCast the only podcast by C++ developers for C++ developers. In this episode Rob and Jason are joined by Phil Nash to talk about C++ Unit Testing with Catch.

CppCast Episode 13: Testdriven C++ using Catch with Phil Nash

by Rob Irving and Jason Turner

About the interviewee:

Phil is a semi-independent software developer, coach and consultant - working in as diverse fields as finance, agile coaching and iOS development. A long time C++ developer he also has his feet in C#, F#, Objective-C and Swift - as well as dabbling in other languages. He is the author of several open source projects - most notably Catch: a C++-native test framework.

CppCon 2014 Microsoft w/ C++ to Deliver Office Across Different Platforms, Part I--Zaika Antoun

By Adrien Hamelin | May 27, 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:

Microsoft w/ C++ to Deliver Office Across Different Platforms, Part I

by Zaika Antoun

(watch on YouTube) (watch on Channel 9)

Summary of the talk:

What does it take to target multiple major mobile devices (as well as traditional environments) with portable, efficient, single-source code? This talk demonstrates architectures, techniques, and lessons learned rooted in actual experience with using C++ to deliver several major cross-platform projects across iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac: Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote) and the SQL Server PowerBI. Each presents a different case study: For example, Office already used C++, whereas PowerBI was originally written in Silverlight and then rewritten in C++; Office is a set of user-facing apps, whereas PowerBI is a system component. Although some of these are demanding first-tier “Cadillac” applications, we expect this experience to be a model for the future as more and more apps fall into this category and use C++ to target many popular platforms from (mostly) a single source base. This talk will cover the following key topics and tradeoffs: Rich vs. reach, including access to latest OS features (e.g., iOS 8 additions) and hardware features (e.g., vector units, GPUs). Consistency of functionality. Client code vs. server/service web code. Sharing vs. quality, including dialing appropriately between more shared code and high quality code. Drawing the line between the bulk of C++ code and interfacing with non-C++ for UX and PALs (platform adaptation/abstraction layers) for target-specific user interface and system services. Architecting PALs, including why “mini-PALs” rather than an “über-PAL.” Forces “doing the right thing” and good architecture with composable components. How C++ enables things not feasible using other technologies. Velocity and enabling faster cross-platform development and deployment. Cost of maintenance, including time, size, and complexity (both breadth and depth). And, last but not least, developing in a single modern C++ source base built with different evolving C++ compilers, including VC++ and Clang/LLVM.