C++Now 2018: Ben Deane “Easy to Use, Hard to Misuse: Declarative Style in C++”

Ben Deane demonstrates how declarative techniques in C++ APIs and functions make interfaces easier to use and harder to misuse.

cppnow.org — Presentation Slides, PDFs, Source Code and other presenter materials are available at: cppnow.org/history/2018/talks/ — We say that interfaces should be easy to use and hard to misuse. But how do we get there? In this talk I will demonstrate how using declarative techniques in APIs, functions, and plain old "regular" code can help. We'll look at what is meant by "declarative style" in C++; explore why declarative interfaces are desirable and how to construct them; and take an in-depth look at which features of C++ help us write in a declarative style. I want to deconstruct C++ a bit, examine what we're doing and what makes the good parts good, and from that reconstruct some best practices. Many of us are already writing code following piecemeal modern advice such as "no raw loops", or "almost always auto", or C++ core guideline recommendations. In many cases, this advice translates to writing more declarative code; being deliberate about exploring and using declarative techniques gives us insight we can apply more widely. — Ben Deane Blizzard Entertainment Principal Software Engineer Ben has been writing games for over 20 years, and in C++ for most of that. He is currently a Principal Engineer at Blizzard Entertainment where he works on the Battle.net team. He's always looking for useful new techniques in C++, and he geeks out on algorithms, APIs, types and functional programming. — Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: BashFilms.com --- *--* ---