Template Metaprogramming With Better Tools

Schedule

18:30 - Doors open, registration
19:00 - Presentation by Ábel Sinkovics & András Kucsma
20:00 - Follow-up discussions with snacks
21:00 - Event ends, doors close

Talk Abstract

Template metaprogramming is a technique for evaluating code at compile-time in C++, based on the special use of template classes and functions. It is mostly used in library development to do type calculations, provide better library interfaces or to perform extra static validations and optimisations.

Is template metaprogramming difficult?
There are a wide range of advanced development environments, debuggers and analysers for C++ while there are only a few tools available for template metaprogramming. Tasks considered simple can become surprisingly difficult without the right tools, while good tools can make difficult problems easy to deal with. The difficulty of a technique depends heavily on its tool support.

This talk introduces template metaprogramming. It presents where it can add value, how it works and introduces tools built for developing and debugging template metaprograms.

About the Presenters

Ábel Sinkovics is a software developer who defended his PhD in January at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. His research is about C++ template metaprogramming, functional programming and domain-specific languages. He has been building libraries supporting domain-specific language embedding based on template metaprogramming and libraries supporting template metaprogrammers. He has also been working on tools supporting metaprogramming in C++.

András Kucsma is a software developer who is currently writing his BSc thesis at Eötvös Loránd University on an interactive template metaprogram debugger for C++. He has been interested in the dark corners of C++ for several years.