User:Erikina

C++ Seminar

Topic: C++ quirks and misconceptions

I've often been surprised about certain aspects of C++, and guilty of glossing over some pretty important features and designs. So I'll attempt to power over a bunch of concepts:

• Static polymorphism (and how enforce an interface)
• Struct vs Class
• template instantiation (and how to make it work with the header/source model)
• inline (Why and when you NEED it)
• copy elision and RVO
• auto_ptr (to be: unique_ptr) and why it's super awesome (and why it doesn't)
• sequence points, guarantees on what happens before what (And the misconceptions around it)

Topic: Callbacks in C++

Tagline: Improve your code, by knowing how to NOT use signals/slots

I've noticed there's a lot of misunderstanding/misconceptions/avoidance with regards to callbacks, and a lot of a abuse of the signal/slot paradigm as a result.

My goal for the seminar will be to start from the basics, (getting an address of a function) -- working through function pointers (and syntax), to why you need arbitrary data (and how to do it) to member function pointers (and syntax) to generalized callbacks (and how to do it, and how to template it).

I will then hope to convince you of the merits of callbacks, and show you how they're more general, more expressive and faster (for both the machine and programmer) than Qt Signals / Slots. I'll attempt to show how they can be used both internally and for also making far cleaner APIs (using QtNetwork as an example)