CppCon, part 2: The Conference

As I promised a couple months back, here is part 2, the conclusion, to C++Con. The basics and my pre-conference adventure is available here.

I went to the first, second, and last days; I didn’t go on Wednesday or Thursday because my family wanted to both see me and talk to me; since I was giving up a week of potential work to go play socializing programmer 50 miles away, it was not unreasonable to spend some time with them. I guess.

Let me start by whining explaining that I hate riding buses. One minor detail I forgot about when I decided to get a bus pass and take the bus to and fro is that I get bad motion sickness when I’m in the backseat of a vehicle. One detail I remembered and experienced is that people like to talk to themselves on the bus. Now, I’m not opposed to talking to myself; I know I will always have an intelligent conversation with someone that understands me. But it is just plain rude to talk to yourself when other people are around. Don’t inconvenience me with a private conversation that you don’t want me to be a part of.

As for the conference itself, the seminars were fantastic. A lot of knowledge about the things that people were passionate about in their particular expertise and interest, from the music industry to graphics to making complicated C++ topics (and that is most of them!) simpler. Seeing and listening to Bjarne Stroustrup, the person who developed C++, giving tips on writing good C++ is like Steve Jobs teaching you how to get the most out of using your iPhone.

My favorite seminar was the one by Kate Gregory, “Stop Teaching C”. You should watch it for yourself in the link I gave you, but her thesis is that there is too much teaching the overcomplicated parts of C, C++’s predecessor that C++ made simple and better. She promotes the idea of skipping the C things that you don’t use in C++ and getting right to the language you want taught. As the husband of a teacher working to be a principal, I get to hear education theories, and Ms. Gregory’s philosophy here is simply that you teach the students you have, not the students you think you should have or the students that you once had – the same as my wife’s.

As for the volunteering part I did, I worked the coat/laptop charging closet for a few of the seminars and assisted in keeping time for one of the lunchtime open sessions that didn’t get recorded. I also did a little bit of sorting the rooms that each of the seminars and meetings were in. Lots of chatting with volunteers and with attendees who were passionate about their jobs and what their companies were doing.

Oh, and yo-yos. My kids loved the light up yo-yos.

Will I do it again this year? I don’t know if my schedule would permit it; my job as an on-call office substitute gives me a flexible schedule, one that I’m not sure I will have come next September. But if I have the chance, I’ll do it again. It was a good experience, and it has made me excited about my own career in software development.

One more thing: if you want to see the seminars for the 2015 convention, they are all on YouTube at the CppCon channel and they are worth the time to watch. Especially the keynotes, the final wrap-up session, and the Gregory seminar I mentioned.

CppCon Report, part 1: The Preconference

I am very close to having my Bachelor’s degree. I just need to finish my project and write my paper on it and it will be done. So close, I can taste it.

Which means it’s time to take a week to not work on it at all and volunteer at CppCon.

When you are done snickering at the name (and be honest: you did the first time you said it out loud), you probably figured out that it is about the programming language C++. The convention itself is over, and I took a couple days off of volunteering to be with my family. Fortunately for me, the convention was close enough to my house that I could go home at night. When traffic is good, it was only about a 30 to 40 minute drive. On the other hand, when I wanted to travel … it was not.

This might take a couple posts or so to cover. This one is about the days leading up to it.

Before I begin, I should let you know that I am terrible at names and always have been. Seriously. When I was growing up, I called my parents mom and dad because I couldn’t remember their names. This means that I won’t be able to share who the people are that I met and spoke with, unless I go and look it up. So if you are reading this and recognize yourself, feel free to comment on your name and I will update this post. Or mention it later. Or something.

As a volunteer, I had the opportunity to attend the pre-conference bootstrap course on the updates to C++ in both C++11 and C++14. The main thing I learned is that I am not a C++ expert. Now, don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of good features in the updates to the language – updates that are necessary and interesting to learn about. But I could actually hear my brain cells crying out because they were too stuffed. The other main thing I learned is that Visual Studio 15, the one I have, is not compliant with C++14 – the one with the coolest features.

After that was done, I went to the Volunteer Dinner because, well, free pizza. A little pizza place a quarter mile away, and we volunteers got the chance to meet each other. The big surprise to me was how many volunteers are from outside the country. One was from Toronto; she was working on a type of credit card payment system that uses GPS systems embedded. Another one was from New Zealand, and he was there just for this conference.

Getting back from the pizza dinner, which literally was uphill both ways, it was Socialization Time. Now seeing that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a socialist, this was not that comfortable for me. There are many things I’d rather do than be in a giant room full of strangers and talk to them; eating broken glass comes to mind. I met a code reviewer from Munich; as he described his job, “I’ve seen code you can’t unsee.” I also met one of the makers of Projucer, which I’ll talk about in a later post. Also met a few other people that I chatted with throughout the week.

Next post, I’ll talk about the conference itself.