CppCon in Aurora, Colorado, USA

In early October think-cell took part in the largest C++ conference in the world, CppCon in Colorado, USA. Over 700 people attended the annual week-long conference that is organized by the Standard C++ Foundation, a not-for-profit organization.

We are proud video sponsors of CppCon and sponsored all conference talks this year to support the wider C++ community. Our Software engineer and C++ library developer Jonathan Müller also attended in person to present a talk. Here is what he had to say about the conference:

 “I attended CppCon 2023 for the second time, first time after the pandemic. Although smaller than in 2019, CppCon is still a big conference where you can meet a lot of different C++ people from various companies and backgrounds. I’ve spent most breaks talking and meeting with new people and what they use C++ for and look forward to seeing them again in the future.

The variety of attendees was reflected in the talks. The absolute conference highlight for me were the talks Friday afternoon. First, I attended “Better Code: Contracts” by Sean Parent and Dave Abrahams. They gave an insightful talk about contracts and interface specifications that everyone should watch. They’ve introduced a new exception safety that is no less useful than the basic exception safety but can be easier to implement. This was followed by “Better Code: Exploring Validity” by David Sankel, which was a deep dive into the precise meaning of the term “valid object”. I adore these fundamental discussions about designing types. To top it off and end the conference, Andrei Alexandrescu gave the closing keynote about optimizing binary search, with a bit of help from ChatGPT. I’ve missed the preview at NDC Techtown two weeks earlier as I was speaking at the same time, so it was great to see it. I can also recommend everyone to watch the lightning talks. I’ve learned the solution to a problem I’ve been having in our code base and look forward to trying it out.

I also gave a talk myself. In “Express your expectations: A fast, compliant JSON pull parser for writing robust applications”, I presented our (open source) JSON parser and talked about what pull parser are and why they are superior in many situations. The attendees seemed to like the talk and the library, which is nice to see.”

If you would like to watch the talks Jonathan recommends (plus many more), head over to CppCon’s YouTube channel to watch the videos for free of charge. Starting in November 2023, one new video will be uploaded per business day so keep an eye out. Happy watching, and we look forward to next year!