Fun and Fashion: Kids Learning about C++

Sara J. ChippsSara J. Chipps shipped a product last November that has already inspired about 4000 kids (aged 8-12) to learn to write C++. Want to know more? So do we, so we’ve invited her to present and give a workshop on Jewelbots at CppCon.

Her talk is Building for the Best of Us: Design and Development with Kids in Mind:

Building an API easy enough for kids to understand (in C++) is a challenge. Every design decision, from the circuit board to the plastic can effect the results. We’ll talk about product design, manufacturing, firmware, software, and Arduino AP as we cover the Jewelbots timeline from Kickstarter to shipping to distribution. Additionally, hear from the two girls who are the top Jewelbots from the Bellevue area! You’ll learn what they have built and how they view the future of C++.

Following her talk, Sara will host a Jewelbots Build Workshop for kids and grownups. This workshop is open to anyone to come and watch (even if you aren’t registered for the conference), but if you want to reserve a Jewelbot to work on during the workshop (and who wouldn’t?), you’ll need to reserve it here: https://cppcon2017.eventbrite.com/

Young women with Jewelbots

CppCon 2017 Program Available

Bjarne StroustrupThe program for CppCon 2017 is now live!

We’ll have over 100 regular sessions delivered by the best C++ presenters in the industry, many returning from previous years as well as some exciting new voices. We’ll have six or seven concurrent tracks full of sessions containing C++ best practices and what you need to know about C++17. In addition, we’ll have panels, lightning talks, workshops, and some awesome headline speakers.

Speaking of headliners, it’s our pleasure to announce that Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++ and Texas A&M University Distinguished Professor, will be returning this September to give the opening keynote, Learning and Teaching Modern C++:

We – attendees at CppCon – are all teachers. Some teach for a living; many occasionally teach a course or give a lecture; essentially all give advice about how to learn C++ or how to use C++. The communities we address are incredibly diverse.

What do we teach, and why? Who do we teach, and how? What is “modern C++”? How do we avoid pushing our own mistakes onto innocent learners?

Teaching C++ implies a view of what C++ is; there is no value-neutral teaching. What teaching tools and support do we need? Consider libraries, compiler support, and tools for learners.

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!

2017 is going to be a great year for C++! Register here to join us.

Early Bird Registration Ends this Weekend

No matter when you register for CppCon 2017, you be able to :

  • Meet with
    • over a thousand other professional C++ engineers, including
      • book, blog, and library authors,
      • standards committee members,
      • compiler and other tool implementers, and
      • teachers and trainers
    • scores of the best presenters in the industry, and
    • exhibitors from all over the world
  • Attend
    • five days of six or seven tracks of peer-reviewed presentations,
    • daily plenary talks from recognized industry leaders,
    • multiple lightning talk sessions,
    • expert panels and special sessions,
    • poster presentations, and
    • social events.

But if you do it this week, you save more than enough money to join us at the Boeing Future of Flight Field Trip.

To help you decide, here is this year’s promo video:

2017 Keynote Speakers

This year’s Call for Submissions has just ended, so it will be a few weeks before we have the program online, but we are ready to announce a few of our headliners for this year. Two have been headliners for every year of CppCon’s history and two are speaking at CppCon for the first time.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Bjarne Stroustrup

Bjarne is the designer and original implementor of C++. He is a founding member of the ISO C++ standards committee for C++ and a major contributor to modern C++.

He is the author of The C++ Programming Language and Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++.

Bjarne is currently a Managing Director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a Visiting Professor in Computer Science at Columbia University.

Herb Sutter

Herb SutterHerb is the convener (chair) of the ISO C++ standards committee.

He is the best-selling author of hundreds of articles and several books including  Exceptional C++  and C++ Coding Standards.

Herb is currently focused on evolving C++ to make it both more powerful and simpler — able to express more in efficient, portable code without relying on proprietary extensions, while also removing needless ceremony and ‘dark corners.’

Lars Knoll

Lars Knoll

Lars is The Qt Company CTO and Qt Project Chief Maintainer.

He has been working on Qt for more than 17 years starting as a software engineer to later leading the global Qt engineering team in Nokia before the Digia acquisition in October 2012. Lars has been an active member of the KDE community and the architect behind KDE’s HTML rendering library that formed the basis for the WebKit open source project.

Lars holds a PhD in physics from the University of Heidelberg. He is a German national and lives with his family in Oslo.

Matt Godbolt

Matt GodboltMatt’s Compiler Explorer project has made his last name both a noun and a verb.

He has been programming for nearly two decades on games, system design, and real-time embedded systems from 8-bit computers up to cutting edge technology on next-generation games consoles.

Matt is currently at DRW in Chicago where he works on cool and exciting secret things.

And 100 more…

These four, and a hundred other C++ experts will be presenting the latest thinking and best practices this September at CppCon. Don’t miss it.

CppCon 2017 Call for Submissions

CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community and so we invite you to present. The conference regular program consists of five days of six tracks of one hour sessions.

Have you learned something interesting about C++, maybe a new technique possible in C++14/17? Or perhaps you have implemented something cool related to C++, maybe a new C++ library? If so, consider sharing it with other C++ enthusiasts by giving a regular program talk at CppCon 2017.

The submissions deadline is June 11 with decisions sent by July 12.

For topic ideas, possible formats, submission instructions and valuable advice on how to make the best possible submission, see the Submissions page.

Note: Calls for lightning talks and Open Content sessions will be made this summer. The deadline for these is the conference itself.

Registration for CppCon 2017 is Open

Registration is now open for CppCon 2017 to be held September 24-29, 2017 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington, USA.

CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community. You will enjoy inspirational talks and a friendly atmosphere designed to help attendees learn from each other, meet interesting people, and generally have a stimulating experience. Taking place this year in the beautiful Seattle neighborhood and including multiple diverse tracks, the conference will appeal to anyone from C++ novices to experts.

Audience13

What you can expect at CppCon:

CppCon’s goal is to encourage the best use of C++ while preserving the diversity of viewpoints and experiences. The conference is a project of the Standard C++ Foundation, a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to support the C++ software developer community and promote the understanding and use of modern, standard C++ on all compilers and platforms.

Call for Class Proposals

The conference is asking for instructors to submit proposals for classes to be taught in conjunction with next September’s CppCon 2017.

If you are interested in teaching such a class, please contact us at info@cppcon.org and we’ll send you an instructors’ prospectus and address any questions that you might have. The deadline for submitting proposals is November 18th, 2016.

All CppCon 2016 Videos Are Up!

We set an attendance record again this year, but the number of C++ programmers that can’t make it will always exceed the number that can. That is why we have committed to producing high quality recordings of the CppCon regular program and distributing them as widely as possible.

To achieve this, we work with Bash Films (www.BashFilms.com). Their commitment to us is to have all our videos edited and uploaded to the CppCon YouTube channel within one month of the end of the conference.

I wanted to share some stats with you on Bash Films’ work for this year:

  • 7653 minutes of video recordedjackiekay
  • 7513 minutes of slides recorded
  • 111 presentations recorded
  • 31 lightning talks recorded
  • 47 different SSD cards used
  • 36 TB of storage used
  • 8 camera operators onsite
  • 0 presentations lost or damaged

This works out to about two sessions a week for every week between now and the 2017 conference.

There is one more stat:

  • 2 weeks to get all the videos edited and uploaded!

That’s correct, Mark Bashian’s team has completed all the videos in two weeks! They over-delivered on their one month commitment by over two weeks so that attendees could catch all the sessions that they missed as soon as possible.

The only thing left for the team to do is to send the videos (on hard drive) to Channel 9, because we continue to make all our content available on both YouTube and Channel 9.

 

Announcing CppCon 2017 Dates and Location

Save the date for the week of September 24th next year in Bellevue, Washington. Building on the success of this year’s pre-conference classes, we will be offering two-day classes on September 23rd and 24th. Registration and reception will be on the 24th and sessions will be the 25th though the 29th.

In the meantime, look for slides and source code for your favorite CppCon 2016 sessions at our presentation material repository. You can also watch CppCon 2016 session videos on YouTube and Channel 9. Some of them are already available on the CppCon YouTube channel.

gaby-thanks

I want to say thanks very much to all the hundreds of people that made CppCon 2016 possible and I look forward to seeing you in Bellevue next September.