CppCon 2020

People often complain about C++: to some, it's not memory-safe enough, not type-safe enough. Some will tell you that some (or all!) of its defaults are wrong. Many complain that it's too expert-friendly.

There's often a grain of truth in criticism, and C++ surely has a bit of each of these alleged warts; it's a language that has history, obviously, and that has evolved organically over the years, and it has the imperfections we can expect for a tool used by millions to perform high-performance or safety- critical tasks in various application domains.

However, there are a significant number of things C++ does right, and there are a number of reasons why we love this language... and love it so much that we gather together to trade ideas, learn about it, understand it better... and enjoy it all!

This talk is about some of the things C++ does right. It does not aim to provide an exhaustive list (far from it!), or to throw arrows at other languages (although there will be comparisons), nor does it aim to offer an apologetic perspective on C++. This talk is about some of those things one misses when using other languages, and aims to remind us of some of those things that make C++ beautiful, fun and efficient.