We’ve previously announced the Opening Keynote by Herb Sutter on what lies ahead for C++.

We’re now pleased to announce the second of our five conference keynotes: Khalil Estell will be talking about something that is often avoided—exceptions in an embedded environment. Khalil is a ISO C++ Committee Member and has extensive experience writing production firmware. His talk follows in the spirit of Herb’s talk where we look at the future and new perspectives of what C++ can offer the modern software developer.

From Khalil’s talk description:

C++ Exceptions for Smaller Firmware

For years, developers have overlooked a powerful tool for reducing binary size: C++ exceptions. Join me on a deep dive into the world of exceptions and discover how they can be harnessed to create more space efficient firmware. We’ll explore the requirements and best practices of embedded development, and show what is required to use exceptions in that environment. By the end of this talk, you’ll have a thorough understanding of how exceptions are handled, what their space costs are, and how exceptions compare to functional errors as values.

Registration is now open so don’t miss out on CppCon 2024 this September 15-20. Register today!

We’re pleased to announce our opening conference keynote: Herb Sutter will be talking about ISO C++26 and onward and where it looks like we are heading in our near future. Herb’s talks regularly provoke conversations and are some of the most viewed on the CppCon channel, and this talk is set to deliver even more. Don’t miss it!

Here is a taste of the talk in Herb’s own words.

This is an exciting year for ISO C++: In just the past few months, it has started to become clear that C++ is approaching three major positive turning points that are starting to materialize together in a blossoming of usability we haven’t seen since C++11.

First, compile-time reflection, including source generation, will dominate the next decade of C++ as arguably the most powerful feature that we’ve ever standardized, and (fingers crossed!) it’s on track for being included in C++26 in the coming months. I expect reflection’s impact on library building to be comparable to that of all the other library-building improvements combined that we’ve added since C++98.

• Related: The CppCon 2024 Friday keynote will be all about reflection… more about that will be announced soon!

Second, memory safety is being taken seriously in WG21. After a decade or two of gradual smaller improvements, the committee is actively working toward taking the major step of enabling well-known proven-effective safety checks at compile time by default, without compromising performance.

• Related: The CppCon 2024 Monday evening panel and Wednesday keynote will be all about safety… more about those will be announced soon!

Third, simplifying C++ is being taken seriously. I’m not the only person actively proposing simplifications to C++, and I expect the rate of simplification proposal papers to increase again in the coming year as the fruits of in-the-field experiments turn into evidence that the experimental improvements are working and are ready to be considered for ISO C++ itself to benefit all programmers.

Most of all, the above overlap and reinforce each other. For example, reflection will enable writing more new facilities as compile-time libraries instead of as language features that have to be baked into a compiler, which helps simplify future language evolution. Reflection will also enable compile-time libraries that let developers express their intent directly and leave it to the library code to accurately generate correct implementations, which helps reduce errors and makes our code both simpler and safer.

ISO C++ has long been solidly in the top 5 programming languages and is going strong. This talk presents reasons to expect that C++’s future is bright, and that perhaps its most important decade is just ahead.

Registration is now open so don’t miss out on CppCon 2024 this September 15-20. Register today!

The Main Program schedule for CppCon 2024 is now live!

We’ll have over one hundred breakout sessions delivered onsite by the best C++ presenters in the industry, many returning from previous years as well as some exciting new voices. We will be announcing our five headline talks here in the coming days.

This year’s Main Program features a broad and deep general program. Within the program are seven dedicated topic tracks: The Back to Basics Track (sessions), the Embedded Track (sessions), the Robotics Track (sessions), the Scientific Computing Track (sessions), the Software Design Track (sessions), and Tooling Track (sessions) are back, and we have a new GameDev Track (sessions)! These “tracks” are to help find talks in specific areas, but as always, there are lots of talks not assigned to a specific track covering a wide variety of important topics.

In addition to the Main Program, we’ll have our annual Committee Fireside Chat, our poster competition, multiple sessions of lightning talks, Open Content talks, BOFs, exhibitors, social events, pre/post-conference classes, and most importantly of all, the informal “hallway track,” providing the opportunity to engage with professionals from across our industry.

Most of the program is published, but we are still working on a few surprises, so keep checking back to see any new additions or time slot adjustments.

We’d like to thank the Program Committee, our speakers, and the many professionals who proposed talks which we, unfortunately, just couldn’t squeeze in this year. Thank you for your hard work and enthusiastic support for this year’s program!

We hope to see you all in just over a month—so register now.