Meeting C++ 2024 - Collective Amnesia?

Peter Sommerlad

On Day 3 at 16:00 (CET/Berlin) in Track A [Saphir Room and online]

This closing keynote will provide you with something to think on your way home from Meeting C++ and hopefully act upon the weeks after it.
With 40+years experience in creating software and almost as long in teaching programming and software engineering I feel like every generation of programmers is cursed to re-live the same problems and re-discover similar potential solutions over and over while falling snake oil traps laid out by media and populism. May be we are cursed of "collective amnesia" and are forgetting what the elders discovered and next generations seniors discover over and again and we the programmer population in general never reach the wisdon of how to create good softare. Thad doing better is always possible should not block our improvement but encourage our refactoring.

While it is easy to keep on ranting like an grumpy old man, I hope to encourage the audience to continue learning after the three intensive days of Meeting C++. While attending such a conference might feel like being brain fed with a Nuremberg Funnel, it should be taken as a start to learn more and actually apply thougtfully what you learn. Just don't try every new trick at once. Think "What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?" and "Could this be done with less?". Some software engineering practices like writing unit tests before the code and programming language tools like a type system that prevents ridiculous code from compiling are things that could be more heavily utilized.

While the newest C++ feature or library might look intriguing to try, think first, if your code will be getting simpler when you apply it. Also if you try, be humble enough to acknowledge failure and remove what didn't work, or what you learned to make your code simpler: remember Kevlin Henney and me: "Less Code == More Software"

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