Poor Man’s Introspection and Reflection in C++: Effective Pointer-to-Member Use

Presented by: Ron Ryan

Description

Pointer-to-member for data members and member functions are an underused construct in C++, but they can be employed to allow one to “visit” the members of a class in an organized fashion. They can provide some of the facilities that are available natively in other languages, namely a form of introspection (where a class instance can describe itself) and reflection (where a class instance can be mutated by means of its description). With some modern C++ techniques, this can be done in an minimally invasive way (you don’t have to alter the reflected class necessarily) with a reasonable syntax so that it looks as though it had been designed into the language intentionally. It is useful for creating, serializers and deserializers, automated testing, and more.

Event Details
Tuesday, September 20th
Social hour begins at 5:30 and the presentation starts at 6:30

If you wish to simply attend virtually, please see the separate invite page, here.

Location
Chicago Trading Company
425 S. Financial
Chicago, IL

Building Access (updated)
Security and entrance procedures are a bit different from recent events. Guests will be checked in at the lobby of 425. A CTC employee will be there to escort you to the presentation on the 6th floor.

About the Presenter

Ron is a graduate of Harvard University Magna Cum Laude in Classics (Latin and Greek) with a Masters in Computer Science from Boston University. He has been programming since he got his first Atari 400 in the early 1980s. Ron has worked for Avid Technology, IBM, Apple, Morgan Stanley, Knight Capital, and is currently at Chicago Trading Company. His first job out of University was helping to port the Avid Media Composer to C++, and has been programming C++ ever since.