Pacific++ 2018: Titus Winters "C++ Past vs. Future"

Titus Winters discusses the maintenance challenges of C++ including ADL, ODR, and ABI stability, and how they affect the language's future.

Website: pacificplusplus.com/ Resources: github.com/pacificplusplus/conference Twitter: twitter.com/pacificplusplus Abstract: Over the last 35 years, C++ has remained a constant fixture in the programming landscape. With advancements in the language through C++11, 14, and 17, we've created new dialects that have breathed new life into C++. With C++ Core Guidelines and a rich community of authors and speakers providing guidance on C++, it is easier now to steer clear of problem areas and hopefully stay in the "good parts" of the language. Or at least, that's what we'd like. In practice, many habits of C++ programmers are unsafe and will be hard to keep working. The triple perils of ADL, ODR, and ABI leave a wide assortment of pitfalls for code maintenance. Many systems happen to work, but perhaps more out of luck than actual correctness. How do we explain this dichotomy? How is the language better than it ever has been, and at the same time so dangerous and burdened with silent pitfalls and legacy? Can the standard evolve over time to reduce these perils? More importantly: should it? In this talk I'll remind people of how precarious most C++ code is in the face of change (like advancing to a new language version), and discuss the most fundamental issue facing the committee these days: how to balance between the legacy code of the past and the yet-to-be-written code of the future. About the speaker: Titus is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google, where he has worked since 2010. He leads Abseil, Google’s open-source C++ library that underpins more than 250M lines of Google code with 12K+ active internal users. He is one of the four arbiters for Google’s official C++ style guidelines. For the last 7 years, Titus has been organizing, maintaining, and evolving the foundational components of Google’s C++ codebase using modern automation and tooling. Titus chairs the Library Evolution Working Group (LEWG) for the C++ Standard - the group responsible for API design proposals to the standard library. He is also chairing the newly-formed SD15 for discussions of Tooling in the C++ ecosystem. Video recorded by: digitalvideoexperts.com.au/