C++11 Was Only the Beginning

We're excited to have Mateusz Pusz visiting us to talk us through the evolution of C++. And Alex Schmolck will help us get less frustrated with C++17.

This month we're hosted by Smarkets - so note the location. There's limited capacity, so please make sure you change your RSVP if you realise you can't make it.

Smarkets will provide food and drink - so be sure to arrive early!

Agenda:

18:30 Socialising with food and drink, care of Smarkets

18:55 Kick-off - Phil Nash

19:00 "Frustration free* C++17 with nix" - Alex Schmolck

What would a dream C++ setup look like?

• < 2 minutes to reproducibly spin up a new dev env., including IDE functionality on any Linux box (or CI server).
• No overheads or headaches from virtualization or docker in dev.
• Every build of the same git commit always builds the same, on everyone's machine; fast builds due to always correct distributed caching (no server involved, just S3). Enjoy tamed Cmake and reliable dependency management.
• Latest Clang 8, all code modern C++17 (using type_safe, fmt, asio and grpc).
• Best practices: enforced and automated canonical source code formatting, absence of compiler warnings, address sanitizer cleanliness, property-based testing.
• Near instantaneous DB migrations.
• Deploy to Docker in prod without having to touch Docker or write Dockerfiles that do something different each time you run them.
• Finally, speedy compilation with lucid error messages and no headaches from undefined behaviour.

19:45 break

19:55 "C++11 Was Only the Beginning" - Mateusz Pusz

C++ is the fastest programming language in the world, and it leaves no room for other languages below it (except assembler). That is why it gets more attention now than ever before. As a result, we observe an increasing speed of C++ language evolution. C++11 was a game changer, but is now considered an "old" language already. C++14 & 17 provided many improvements that allow us to write portable, safer, and faster code in a shorter time. The resulting source code is easier to reason about and maintain. Moreover, C++20 is coming soon, and it is going to be a game changer again.

In my talk, I provide a few typical legacy code examples that most of us write every day. I describe how those samples evolve with the changes introduced in the each C++ language release from C++11 up to the major groundbreaking features of the upcoming C++20. During the talk, the audience will learn how much easier, more robust, and safer is the code written using modern tools that we get with every new C++ release.

21:25 ... we'll adjourn to a local hostelry

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About the speakers:

Mateusz is a software architect, chief engineer, and security champion with more than 15 years of experience in designing, writing and maintaining C++ code for fun and living. C++ consultant, trainer, conference speaker, and evangelist focused on Modern C++. His main areas of interest and expertise are code performance, low latency, stability, and security.

Mateusz worked at Intel for 13 years, and now he is the head of the C++ Competency Center at EPAM Systems. He is also a founder of Train IT that provides dedicated C++ trainings and consultant services to corporations.

Mateusz is a contributor and an active voting member of the ISO C++ Committee (WG21) where, together with the best C++ experts in the world, he shapes the future of the C++ language. He is also a co-chair of WG21 Study Group 14 (SG14) responsible for driving performance and low latency subjects in the Committee. In 2013 Mateusz won “Bench Games 2013” – worldwide competition in the C++ language knowledge.

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Alex is a software engineer at the exchange team at Smarkets. He has been heavily involved in moving the exchange from Erlang to C++17 and from a proprietary API to the financial industry standard FIX . He has previously worked at Google, LShift & Thought Machine. Alexander maintains Smarkets' open source project Marge Bot - https://github.com/smarkets/marge-bot.