David Schwartz, the Chief Cryptographer of the Ripple distributed payment system, will be giving a keynote this year at CppCon! David, also known as “JoelKatz”, is a respected voice in the crypto-currency community. Prior to working on Ripple, David developed secure messaging and cloud storage software for government and military applications. He’ll talk about Developing Blockchain Software:

This talk will explain what public blockchain systems like Bitcoin and Ripple are, the unique challenges of developing software for them, and how C++ helps to meet these challenges.

Security issues are paramount. Blockchain systems are open source, have large attack surfaces, and can cause significant financial damage
if they have exploitable defects. Performance and scalability are also major concerns.

C++ provides a unique balance that helps meet these challenges. The language’s design makes it possible to catch bugs at compile time, write modular code that can be tested, develop flexible data structures and manage resources. Yet, where performance is critical, it does not obscure what your code is making the computer actually do.

The primary purpose of the talk is to explain what blockchains are, increase understanding of the unusual challenges developers of blockchain software experience, and to demonstrate why C++ is a good choice to address them.

We’ll also have a plenary talk by Jason Turner! Jason Turner is an independent contractor with 16 years of development experience. For the past 6 years he’s been specializing in cross platform development, scripting of C++ libraries, and automated testing and code quality analysis. He’s the co-creator and maintainer of the embedded scripting language for C++, ChaiScript, and author and curator of the forkable coding standards document. He’s also one of the co-hosts of the CppCast pod cast. We’re all excited about Jason’s plenary, Rich Code For Tiny Machines: A Simple Commodore 64 Game In C++17:

The Commodore 64 was released in 1982 and is the best selling computer model of all time. At 34 years old, even the most simple embedded processor today outperforms it. Join me on an exploration of how C++17 techniques can be utilized to write expressive, high performance, high level code for simple computers. Together we will create a game for this aging system.

You’ll leave the talk with a better understanding of what your compiler is capable of and be able to apply these ideas to create better code on modern systems

There’s still time to register for CppCon 2016! Come join us in September!

— Bryce Adelstein Lelbach

Speaking for the first time in the US, Anthony Williams, one of the original authors of Boost.Thread and the author of C++ Concurrency in Action will be joining us this year at CppCon! His talk, The Continuing Future of Concurrency in C++, will provide overview of the additions to the standard C++ concurrency libraries in the Technical Specifications for Concurrency and Parallelism and the C++14 and C++17 standards. These additions include: continuations, latches, barriers, atomic smart pointers, shared ownership mutexes, executors, concurrent queues, distributed counters, coroutines, parallel algorithms and more.

Hans Boehm, the chair of the C++ standards committee’s concurrency and parallelism study group (SG1), will also be speaking at CppCon this year. Hans may be best known for his work on the Boehm garbage collector, but he’s also one of the chief architects of the C++ memory model. Hans will be talking about Using Weakly Ordered Atomics Correctly.

We have plenty more content on concurrency in this year’s program, including:

• The Speed of Concurrency: Is Lock-Free Faster?, Fedor Pikus
• No Sane Compiler Would Optimize Atomics, JF Bastien

Richard Smith, the project editor for the C++ standards committee and the code owner for the Clang project will be at CppCon 2016. In his talk, There and Back Again: An Incremental C++ Modules Design, Richard will share the Clang community’s experience with modules and discuss the direction of modules standardization efforts.

We have a few other talks on modules:

• Deploying C++ Modules to 100s of Millions of Lines of Code, Manuel Klimek
• C++ Modules: State of the Union, Gabriel Dos Reis

Finally, some talks of interest to the financial industry:

• Introspection of Performance Sensitive Financial Market Data, Eduardo Madrid
• Implementing Lightweight Object Persistence with Modern C++, Bob Steagall

It’s not too late to register for CppCon 2016! Come join us in September!

— Bryce Adelstein Lelbach

Continue reading →

I’m very pleased to announce that Dan Saks will be one of our keynotes this year! Dan is one of the world’s leading experts on the C and C++ programming languages and their use in developing embedded systems.

He is the president of Saks & Associates, which offers training and consulting in C, C++ and embedded programming. Dan has previously served as secretary of the ANSI and ISO C++ Standards committees and as a member of the ANSI C Standards committee.

Dan used to write the “Programming Pointers” column for embedded.com. He has also written for numerous publications including The C/C++ Users Journal, The C++ Report, The Journal of C Language Translation, Software Development, Embedded Systems Design and Dr. Dobb’s Journal. With Thomas Plum, he wrote C++ Programming Guidelines, which won a 1992 Computer Language Magazine Productivity Award. He has presented at conferences such as Software Development and Embedded Systems. More recently, he contributed to the CERT Secure C Coding Standard and the CERT Secure C++ Coding Standard.

Dan’s keynote, extern “C”: Talking to C Programmers About C++, will be about migrating C code (and C programmers) to modern C++:

Most of us have heard this story. We’ve even told it ourselves…

C++ is nearly all of C, plus a whole lot more. Migrating code from C to C++ is pretty easy. Moreover, the migration itself can yield immediate benefits by exposing questionable type conversions that can be sources of latent bugs. After migration, the code performs as well in C++ as in the original C. And now that it’s C++, you have ready access to a wealth of advanced features you can (but don’t have to) use to implement enhancements.

Who wouldn’t want that? Legions of C programmers, apparently.

Despite the success of C++ in numerous application domains, C remains considerably more popular, especially in embedded, automotive, and aerospace applications. In many cases, projects resist C++ because their managers think the risks outweigh the benefits. In other cases, the resistance comes from programmers who persist in believing bad things about C++, even when those things aren’t true.

What can the C++ community do to overcome this resistance? Drawing on lessons from cognitive science, linguistics and psychology, and (of course) computer science, this talk offers suggestions about how to make the case for C++ more persuasive to C programmers.

---

We’ve got some program previews from three tracks today:

Here’s some of our content on embedded programming:

• Implementing a Modern C++ MQTT Client for Embedded Devices, Michael Caisse
• Control Freak++: Writing an Embedded RTPS Library in Modern C++, Jackie Kay

We’ve also got a lot of great talks about the upcoming Coroutines TS:

• An Introduction to C++ Coroutines, James McNellis
• C++ Coroutines: Under the Covers, Gor Nishanov

And finally, some talks about accelerator and GPU programming:

• Towards Heterogeneous Programming in C++, Gordon Brown
• Bringing Clang and C++ to GPUs: An Open-Source, CUDA-Compatible GPU C++ Compiler, Justin Lebar

Come join us at CppCon in Bellevue this September – registration is still open!

— Bryce Adelstein Lelbach

Continue reading →

We have an exciting week ahead of us as we start announcing the CppCon 2016 program. The full program will be published next Sunday. Until then, we’ll broadcast a handful of talks each day. Make sure to check tomorrow’s preview – we’ll reveal one of the keynotes!

Let’s start off with some sessions about generic algorithms in the standard library:

• Regular Expressions in C++, Present and Future, Tim Shen
• STL Algorithms – Why You Should Use Them, and How to Write Your Own, Marshall Clow
• The C++17 Parallel Algorithms Library and Beyond, Bryce Adelstein Lelbach
• std::accumulate(): Exploring an Algorithmic Empire, Ben Deane

We also have a few talks about exceptions to share:

• Out of Memory? Business as Usual: Examining Applications That Do Not Terminate on std::bad_alloc, Sergey Zubkov
• The Exception Situation, Patrice Roy

The gaming community has always been a part of CppCon, and this year is no exception. Here’s some of the game development content that you’ll see at CppCon this year:

• Exploring Modern C++ Game Development with Unreal Engine 4, Marcus R. Brown
• The MAME (Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator) Story: From C to Modern C++, Miodrag Milanović
• Rainbow Six Siege: Quest for Performance, Nicolas Fleury

If you want to come join us for CppCon 2016, there’s still time to register!

— Bryce Adelstein Lelbach

Continue reading →

We have a program! We received over 175 submissions for CppCon this year, and we accepted about 100 of them. In a few days, we’ll post the full six-track schedule. Until then, here’s a preview of some excellent talks about data structures:

• High Performance Code 201: Hybrid Data Structures, Chandler Carruth
• Colonies, Performance and Why You Should Care, Matt Bentley
• The Details of std::string at Facebook, Nicholas Ormrod
• tuple<>: What’s New, and How it Works, Stephan T. Lavavej
• variant<>: Past, Present and Future, David Sankel

If you want to come join us for CppCon 2016, there’s still time to register!

— Bryce Adelstein Lelbach

Continue reading →

Registration is now open for CppCon 2016 to be held September 18-23, 2016 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.

What you can expect at CppCon:

• Pre-conference classes: Choose from six exciting classes:
  • The C++ Core Guidelines with Kate Gregory
  • Concurrent Thinking in C++ with Anthony Williams
  • Crafting Embedded Software in C++ with Dan Saks
  • Modernizing your C++ with Michael Caisse
  • Programming with Qt/Widgets with Giuseppe D’Angelo
  • Using C++ for Low-Latency Systems with Patrice Roy
• Field trip to Living Computer Museum: Join us Sunday afternoon before registration for a chance to meet other attendees and interact with historic hardware.
• Invited talks and panels: Expect a week full of insight from some of the world’s leading experts in C++. Still have questions? Ask them at one of CppCon’s panels featuring those at the cutting edge of the language.
• Presentations by the C++ community: What do embedded systems, game development, high frequency trading, and particle accelerators have in common? C++, of course! Expect talks from a broad range of domains experts focused on practical C++ techniques, libraries, and tools.
• Lightning talks: Get informed at a fast pace during special sessions of short, less formal talks. Never presented at a conference before? This is your chance to share your thoughts on a C++-related topic in an informal setting.
• Evening events and “unconference” time: Relax, socialize, or start an impromptu coding session.

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.