As every developer knows languages fade in and out of fashion. At time of writing Python is rocketing to stardom (as much for ML and Serverless as DevOps), F# has been resurrected as the darling of the DDD community and Go, Rust etc… are worming their way into our hearts. Of course nothing in IT is new apart from the very old, hence functional concepts from the 1970’s are being added to languages like Kotlin, Scala and PureScript as the Next Big Thing™ The great wheel turns and we turn with it.
One language that has faded from the Enterprise but remains prevalent elsewhere is C++. Those of us who remember the glorious (ahem) days of MFC, COM, CORBA etc… may be tempted to click away at this point, but we’re not talking about your grandfather's C++ anymore. Whilst the majority of us have been living the good life in VM’s those who labour in Telcos, Trading Houses and Games Companies have been incrementally evolving the language to the point where it has a feature set comparable to newer alternatives. Plus of course the performance it was always known for. But yes, you still need to know pointers…
ACCU Autumn Conference
It may surprise you to know that some of these stalwarts walk amongst us, and a local company, clearpool, along with support from the BSI C++ Panel, has worked hard to bring the wider C++ world closer to Belfast. As a result the International C++ Standards Committee (aka. WG21) will be coming to Belfast in November for a week of discussions, debates and drafting of standards. This is a considerable achievement for the NI tech scene and our C++ community deserves credit for it.
Every time the BSI C++ Panel has hosted the WG21 meeting it has been followed by an ACCU conference, where you can hear the biggest names in the C++ community talking in great depth about programming language design, performance engineering, scalable architectures etc… Although the bias is obviously tilted towards C++ there have always been a range of other languages, libraries and frameworks under discussion. You can find examples of these on the ACCU YouTube Channel.
This time round the organisers are especially determined to widen out the scope of the event, including a track specifically targeting emerging languages and frameworks. For reasons that remain unclear they have asked me to help out in this regard, and I’m a sucker for free coffee and the opportunity to persuade real developers to stand up and talk about the wonderful things they are doing.
Save The Date
So please can I ask that you:
Save the dates of the 11th and 12th November, and keep an eye on the ACCU Twitter account for further updates about speakers and topics. Should you like to live dangerously early-bird registration is already open.
Call For papers
Consider participating in the event! The call for papers is open until 16th June and there is also scope for organising Hackathons etc… in and around the talks. We will have the venue and the audience, so please come to us with ideas for events.
Contact Details
You can reach out to myself for further details - via email, social media or just by calling into the office. You can also email the conference chair.