De-fragmenting C++: Making Exceptions and RTTI More Affordable and Usable - Herb Sutter CppCon 2019

Herb Sutter proposes a zero-overhead exception model for C++ to address community fragmentation caused by disabling exceptions and RTTI.

CppCon.org Discussion & Comments: reddit.com/r/cpp/ Presentation Slides, PDFs, Source Code and other presenter materials are available at: github.com/CppCon/CppCon2019 — De-fragmenting C++: Making Exceptions and RTTI More Affordable and Usable A fundamental reason why C++ is successful and loved is its adherence to Stroustrup’s zero-overhead principle: You don’t pay for what you don’t use, and if you do use a feature you can’t reasonably code it better by hand. In the C++ language itself, there are only two features that violate the zero-overhead principle, exception handling and RTTI – and, unsurprisingly, these are also the only two C++ language features that every C++ compiler has switches to turn off and that are regularly discouraged or even banned. This matters because not using these features is the largest current cause of fragmentation of the C++ community into incompatible dialects, and the cause of recurring problems including type confusion security vulnerabilities arising from “didn’t down-cast using dynamic_cast because that would be too slow.” This talk is about ongoing long-term efforts to try to unify the community in this area, not by replacing exceptions and RTTI, but by doubling down: fully embracing exceptions and RTTI, and improving them so they can be zero-overhead too. — Herb Sutter Herb is an author, designer of several Standard C++ features, and chair of the ISO C++ committee and the Standard C++ Foundation. His current interest is simplifying C++. — Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: BashFilms.com Work at Hudson River Trading (HRT): tinyurl.com/safxfctf