We’ve previously announced keynotes by Bjarne Stroustrup, Herb Sutter, Lisa Lippincott, Michael Caisse, and Sean Parent. This is the last of our six conference keynotes to be announced.

Kevlin will be online for an important discussion on the limits of what is possible in software.

Here is his talk description:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” the Queen told Alice on her adventures through the looking glass. Only six? In software development we believe impossible things all the time, no matter the time of day!

In this talk, however, we are going to take a look at six specific impossible things that shape the limits of what we can develop, all the way from the smallest detail of integer representation to the minefield of task estimation and prioritisation, via the uncertainty of distributed systems and the limits of computability. Once we know our limits, we can work within them to create solutions rather than problems.

We’ve previously announced keynotes by Bjarne Stroustrup, Herb Sutter, Lisa Lippincott and Michael Caisse. This is the fifth of our six conference keynotes to be announced.

We’re happy to announce: Sean will be in Aurora live, in person for an important discussion on requirements, guarantees, and domains and how these effect the Standard Library and what we can expect from it.

Here is his talk description:

We often take it for granted that calling one of the Standard algorithms will do something meaningful. For example, when invoking `position = find(first, last, value)` we expect that if an element equal to value is contained in the range `[first, last)` then `position` will point to the first such element; otherwise, position will equal `last`. But how do we know `find `will perform this operation? This talk explores requirements, guarantees, and domains, and we’ll discover that maybe `find` doesn’t.

We’ve previously announced keynotes by Bjarne Stroustrup, Herb Sutter, and Lisa Lippincott. This is the fourth of our six conference keynotes to be announced.

We’re happy to announce: Michael will be in Aurora live, in person to deliver a brand-new talk about inspiring and being inspired by the embedded world around us.

Michael Caisse started using C++ with embedded systems over 30 years ago. He continues to be passionate about combining his degree in Electrical Engineering with elegant software solutions and is always excited to share his discoveries with others.

Here is his talk description:

Less than 1% of microprocessors sold each year find their way into general purpose computers. Desktops, laptops, and servers of all sizes represent a very small fraction of the compute that surrounds us. We interact with a few of these systems but most go unnoticed. These invisible, unsung embedded devices offer lessons in engineering at all scales and can provide inspiration to seasoned practitioners and future technologists.

Join me as we learn from the embedded world and become inspired to inspire.

This talk is the Keynote talk for the Embedded Track.

We’ve previously announced keynotes by Bjarne Stroustrup and Herb Sutter. This is the third of our six conference keynotes to be announced.

We’re happy to announce: Lisa Lippincott will be in Aurora live, in person to deliver a brand-new talk about a fundamental basis of understanding computer programs.

Lisa Lippincott designed the software architectures of Tanium and BigFix, two systems for managing large fleets of computers. She is chair of the numerics study group of the C++ standardization committee.

Here is her talk description:

What is a value? The most common conception is that values are inhabitants of a platonic mathematical world, too far away to be examined or subjected to experiment. As a basis for understanding computer programs, this conception is awkwardly non-local and disturbingly mystical.

In this lecture, I will present a functionalist conception of value, situated locally within the realm of procedural programming. I will show how values in this conception relate directly to program execution, and examine how events within program execution are related through the stability, substitutability, and repeatability of values.

This talk is the Keynote talk for the Software Design Track.

Registration is now open for what will certainly be one of the most memorable CppCons ever this October 24-29. Register today!

Tickets are now available for both online attendees and in-person attendees who are vaccinated.

As already announced, CppCon 2021 will kick off on Monday, October 25 with Bjarne Stroustrup delivering the opening keynote live in person in Aurora, Colorado, USA.

We’re happy to announce another plenary talk: Herb Sutter will be there live in person to deliver a brand-new talk about post-C++20 C++ language evolution. Here is his talk description:

Extending and Simplifying C++: Pattern Matching using is and as

C++20 is a unique historic milestone: the first edition of Standard C++ that’s “D&E-complete,” with essentially all of the features Bjarne Stroustrup outlined in The Design and Evolution of C++ for C++’s evolution. That doesn’t mean evolution is done, however, and work continues on adding a few more important features in C++23 and beyond, including reflection and pattern matching.

In this talk, I’ll show the C++ pattern matching libraries and language proposals we’ve considered, and present my own contribution that builds on them. My paper has two major aims: (1) to make the syntax clean and regular, and avoid inventing a little sublanguage that works only inside “inspect”; and (2) to make it generalizable so we can use it consistently throughout the language, because matching a pattern is a broadly useful feature that ideally should not be limited to “inspect” only… for example, we would love to express patterns in “if” and “requires” conditions too.

I hope that the most important contribution is that, if we add pattern matching in a way that also provides general “match” and “extract” support throughout the language in the form of generalized “is” constraints and “as” casts, the net result is that we can actually simplify C++… yes, even as we add new features and more expressive power. How can that be simpler? By letting programmers directly express their intent where they have to express it indirectly today, by making the language more regular with fewer special cases to learn, by unifying the syntax of existing standard library features that today have a gaggle of different and divergent styles (e.g., variant, optional), and by providing one general and expressive way to use patterns cleanly throughout C++.

Registration is now open for what will certainly be one of the most memorable CppCons ever this October 24-29. Register today!

Tickets are now available for both online attendees and in-person attendees who are vaccinated, with the goal of opening registration further as we all learn more about what will be safe.

The Main Program for CppCon 2021 is now live!

This year, CppCon is a hybrid format, so we are presenting four tracks for onsite attendees and five tracks for online attendees.

Online attendees will be able to participate in onsite sessions via “simul-cast” for most sessions. A few onsite sessions will be recorded and rebroadcast for online attendees. Rebroadcasted sessions will feature the presenters live in the session chat room and, time allowing, live Q&A at end of the session. (Online attendees will have the ability to view recorded versions of all sessions–onsite and online–shortly after they happen.)

We’ll have over seventy breakout sessions delivered onsite and sixty additional remote sessions by the best C++ presenters in the industry, many returning from previous years as well as some exciting new voices, some of whom are able to present only because we are offering a remote presenting possibility. In addition, we’ll present our traditional onsite plenary session every day and an online opening keynote. We’ve already announced our onsite Opening Keynote and will be announcing our other five headline talks here in coming days.

This year’s Main Program features three special tracks including the Back to Basics Track, the Embedded Track, and the band new Software Design Track.

In addition to the Main Program, we’ll have the panels, lightning talks, Open Content talks, BOFs, exhibitors, social events, and classes that attendees have enjoyed in past years. Note that all but one of our classes have been moved online to allow for greater participation.

Most of the program is published, but we are still working a few surprises, so keep checking back.

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 less than a month so register now.

The deadline for Main Program submissions has passed with a near-record number of submissions!

The conference organizers are grateful for, and excited about, the almost-two-hundred submissions that we received. We are excited both by the quality of the submissions and by the fact that that the vast majority of submissions were for onsite presentations.

Our Program Committee is currently hard at work reviewing and rating each submission and we know that we’ll have an amazing program for both onsite and online attendees in Aurora in October. As you know, we’ve announced that Bjarne will be our opening keynote onsite. (We are anxious to make our next onsite keynote announcement but that isn’t quite ready yet.)

A peek behind the curtain for those of you that have not been part of the submission/review process: Each submission receives written evaluations by several members of the CppCon Program Committee. There are two goals of each committee member as they draft these evaluations. The most obvious is to select the best possible program for CppCon attendees. On the one hand, this is easy because with so many high-quality submissions, creating a great program comes out pretty naturally, but on the other hand, it is very hard because we know that our audience has come to have great expectations of a CppCon program, not just that every individual sessions is of high quality, but that the program as a whole provides coverage of the topics that matter to our attendees, and also because the competition is fierce. The quality of the submissions that we don’t accept is getting higher every year.

Which leads us to the second goal of members as they draft their evaluations. The evaluations are, of course, shared with the submitters, so each evaluation should also contain constructive advice on how to improve the submission. For submissions that are accepted, this leads to an even better program for attendees. For submissions that are not accepted, this leads to better submissions to future programs (both at CppCon and other conferences).

Our feeling is that all submissions, from the weakest to the strongest, can be improved in some way and comments that we’ve received from submitters (both those that have been accepted and those that have not) let us know that submitters appreciate thoughtful, constructive comments.

Creating multiple, thoughtful evaluations on almost two-hundred submissions touching on virtually every topic of C++ and software design in less than a month is a mammoth task, but we know that the CppCon 2021 Program that you’ll be seeing in Aurora and/or online, will be something that we as organizers, the Program Committee, and the presenters, will be proud to present.