cpp.chat

This week our main topic is Simplicity and we're joined by Kate Gregory, who will be keynoting CppCon on the subject, and Jonathan Boccara, whose blog is often focused on pursuing simplicity, too. We cover how to deal with complexity in legacy code, e.g. a report function containing thousands of lines of switch statement (and a 27 step process to add a new report), what simple code looks like to begin with, techniques that help - including functional programming and TDD, and some of the limitations of all these approaches.

This week we didn't start out with a theme topic, but spent time discussing conferences around the world as well as whether too many diluting proposals are going through the standards process. Also, is it actually easier to get a library into the standard than Boost? What really was the moral of the story of the Vasa?

This week we discuss Contracts, both as an idea (and possible implementations) and as the language level proposal currently progressing through the ISO process. We have one of the proposal's authors, John Lakos, as well as an interested bystander, Kévin Boissonneault. We finally get to Jon's rant on non-const arguments in post-conditions, and realise that the proposal authors may be one step ahead of us!

After a break for vacations and the ISO meeting in Rapperswil, we're back with an episode on the new SG15 study group and, in particular, its focus on dependency managers and build systems. All of our guests have been major contributors to different dependency managers and build systems and combine their ideas and experience in a series of debates and discussions that will get you thinking!

More proposals! This time the main topic is p0847r1, 'Deducing this', authored by our guests, Gašper and Ben, along with Barry Revzin and Sy Brand. This proposal is a simple idea, that works by allowing you to make explicit something that has always been implicit in the language. Yet the consequences are many and far reaching - solving many little problems - and simplifying others. Gašper also mentions another proposal of his, p1099r0, 'Using Enum', which is another simple language change for added consistency, extra convenience and less verbosity - but otherwise narrower in scope.

In this episode we discuss Herb Sutter's new proposal, p0709, 'Zero-overhead deterministic exceptions', a.k.a. 'Static Exceptions' - and a couple of supporting proposals from Niall Douglas (p1028 and p1029). We talk about what the proposed feature is, how it works, and why it is so signifiant. Find out why Jon is, 'really excited' about it!

In this episode we discuss, with speakers, organisers and attendees - old and new - what it is that makes C++ Now special: from bears to beers, low-level experts to high altitude running, C++ Now has it all.

Note that this episode was recorded before episode 26, with Rob and Jason, so Jon introduces it as if it was the first after the hiatus - a nd some of the same jokes are made. Sorry about that. Normal service (and ordering) will resume from the next episode.

This is the first episode of cpp.chat in the podcast format, and the first of the rebooted series, following a hiatus since last summer. In this episode we introduce, new producer and co-host, Phil Nash, and entertain Rob and Jason from 'the other C++ podcast', CppCast. We turn the tables on these long-time interviewers, digging into their background and preferences, as well as looking back at three years of CppCast.