As already announced, CppCon 2021 this October will be the full normal in-person conference now that many of us can meet safely, and are just bursting with anticipation to see each other again in person… and also a coordinated online conference for those who aren’t yet ready to engage in person or for whom travel is difficult. The Call for Submissions is open for both in-person and online sessions, and we are planning to make much of the in-person and online content available in near-real-time to online attendees… including the in-person keynotes, which brings us to the opening talk of the conference…

CppCon 2021 will kick off on Monday, October 25 with Bjarne Stroustrup delivering the opening keynote live in person in Aurora, Colorado, USA. This is Stroustrup’s first in-person talk in North America since C++20 was completed, just before the pandemic lockdowns began. His talk connects C++’s roots with all the things that make C++20 a historic milestone – it’s not only the biggest release of C++ in a decade, but also the first edition of Standard C++ ever that is “D&E-complete,”containing all of the features (except only unified function call syntax) that Stroustrup described a quarter-century ago in The Design and Evolution of C++ as his goals for C++’s future development, including concepts, coroutines, and modules which in 2021 are for the first time now available as actual realities in production C++ compilers.

CppCon 2021 is proud to be the forum for Dr. Stroustrup’s landmark talk, which he describes as follows:

C++20: Reaching for the Aims of C++

Out of necessity C++ has been an evolving language. I outline some early ideals for C++, some techniques for keeping the evolution directed, and show how C++20 comes close to many of those ideals. Specific topics include type-and-resource safe code, generic programming, modularity, and the elimination of the preprocessor. Naturally, over the years, C++ has acquired many “barnacles” that can become obstacles to developing elegant and efficient code. That has been a recognized problem since the early days of C – Dennis Ritchie and I talked about it – so we must distinguish between what can be done and what should be done. The C++ Core Guidelines is the current best effort in that direction. The talk will start with a sequence of early design aim statements, and then match them directly to working C++20 examples and the Core Guidelines.

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

Registration is now open for both online and in-person attendees. In-person attendees will require proof of being fully vaccinated, with the goal of further opening registration as we learn more about what will be safe in October.