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