It's been 7 years since I was at Meeting C++ and I'm really looking forward to it. There are great keynotes planned and the schedule as a whole is full of talks I want to hear! I'm doing The Aging Programmer and hope it lands as well in Berlin as it has elsewhere. As always, I find it hard to believe there are too many C++ conferences for me to be at all of them, and I'm making an effort to try to mix things up from year to year and not just go to "the usual places" every time. It's good to see some speakers I haven't seen for a while, and be introduced to ideas I haven't been following.

There's still time to get your tickets! I hope to see you there.

Kate

We work on the conference for a year, maybe more than a year, because we start thinking about "next year" before we've even had this year. Then it starts, and it's wonderful, and suddenly it's the last day.

We kicked off the day with a wonderful keynote by April Wensel about compassion and how bringing warmth and caring into your software development practices makes better code, not just happier people. Then I went to Tina Ulbrich's Throwing Tools at Ranges which had a lot of numbers and data for those who worry ranges bring performance issues.

A CppNorth tradition is that we don't provide lunch every single day, wanting to send attendees out into Toronto to experience the downtown neighbourhood. Day 3 was the "go out" day for lunch and from what I heard in the afternoon, people liked it, as they have other years. After lunch I went to Where There Is A Loop There is an Algorithm by Peter Lorimer and Fatemeh Jafargholi. I really liked how Fatemeh connected something I said about memorable catchphrases like "better safe than sorry" to algorithms and their names.

Then another Conor Hoekstra "so many languages" talk, Composition Intuition II. It was a careening ride between "heh, I can actually follow this, that is kind of neat" and "what?!?". Conor takes some of the mystery out of jargon words you hear other people use and helps to bring concepts from esoteric languages ("this one was written for winning code golf challenges") into our regular lives.

Then came perhaps the most anticipated break of the conference: The Canadian Snacks Break!

Butter tarts, nanaimo bars, maple cookies, and little bags of Hickory Sticks! You won't forget where you are at this conference!

We wrapped up with a keynote from Tony Van Eerd that appeared for a while to have only one slide (but actually had 86) and a lot of philosophy and thinking. To do a good job of abstraction, you need to think about what a thing is, and what the properties of a thing are, and Tony led us through that very skilfully. Definitely one to chew on on the way home.

And with that I was on the way home. Into the GO station that literally connects to the Microsoft building:

And on the train, with one well-timed selfie-with-the-venue:

See you all next year! You can even buy your tickets right now for a huge discount to use this year's budget, if you like!

Kate

I really enjoy speaking at NDC Techtown in Norway. The airport is pleasant and easy to navigate, the trains are reliable, and it's a quick walk from the train station to the hotel, which is right at the venue. Plus the other speakers are always amazing, so I have a jam-packed two days of sessions to attend. Many years ago I decided to only speak at conferences where I would want to watch sessions, and it improved my life tremendously!

This year I'll do The Aging Programmer. This is a new talk that should be helpful for even the youngest programmers amongst us, because when it comes to planning for a happy old age doing what you enjoy, it's never too late, and it's also never too soon.

See you there! You've got three more days to order Early Bird tickets!

Kate

I am really starting to look forward to CppNorth. We're in a new venue this year, the Microsoft Canada offices! They have a lovely suite of presentation rooms that they make available to community groups like ours. The program is chosen, and we're working on the schedule. In the meantime you can see the speakers and their talks. If you're ready, register now! You can also book a room at the conference hotel, the Royal York. It's an easy walk from Union Station to both the conference and the hotel as you can see from this map showing all three.

For those who would fly to Toronto, there's a train called the UP between Union Station and YYZ. You should plan to come a little early so you can do some sightseeing before the conference. There's a see-and-do channel on the conference discord that will give you some great ideas.

I'm honoured to do the opening keynote again. This year's topic: The Aging Programmer. Eyes, wrists, memory, stamina ... so many things we rely on can get weaker as we age. That doesn't mean you can't keep going if you want to. I'll talk about it.

See you there!

Kate

On January 8th, 2004, I got an email from the MVP Lead for Visual C++ at Microsoft, asking if I would like to be an MVP. After checking to see what that meant, I said yes, and was accepted into the program. I was renewed every year, and at some point after half a year, making just over 20 years coming up at the end of June. I'm still the only MVP called Kate.

I went out for MVP Summit that first year, and some RD stuff at the same time. Here's a production still from "Red Chair Green Wall" - the plan had been to greenscreen in some image related to where we each were from, but then in the end, we didn't. I'm including it to show how much younger I was then!

I've decided not to renew this year. Usually, people making this announcement do so because they're no longer doing the sorts of things MVPs do. But I'm still teaching, speaking, helping folks online, writing the occasional book, helping to run a conference, and all the technical things as well. What's changed isn't so much me, it's the program. I always valued my connection to the Visual C++ team very highly. These days, the team maintains those connections with developers whether they are MVPs or not. Events like Pure Virtual C++, among other things, can keep me informed as well or better than the program can. The MVP program is all Azure this and AI that and exciting details and announcements about conferences that just aren't relevant to me. I'm sure they are useful and exciting tools and events, for someone. I am focused on my little piece of the world and don't need more information on the stuff I've decided to ignore.

Joining the program was definitely life changing. I had some wonderful times, learned things I really needed to learn in as quick and enjoyable a way as you can imagine, met terrific people and raised my professional profile. I would do it all again in a heartbeat. I'm just not going to keep doing it, because for me personally the benefits are dwindling.

I'm truly grateful to John Perry, for bringing me into the program, to Karen Young for inspiration and funny stories, to Sasha Krsmanovic for everything, to Sim Chaudhry for cheer and support, and to Betsy Weber for being the last one standing. Most of all, I'm grateful to my fellow C++ MVPs, and the Canadian MVPs from all technologies, for being great people to spend time with and learn from. There are too many to mention -- I hope you all know you really made a difference.

Sure, I could have cropped it a little tighter, but then you wouldn't see the picture in the background of me with Bill Gates :-) What a marvelous pair of decades!

Kate

During CppNorth, I took a few minutes away from the conference to do an interview for Pluralsight. The host was my dear friend Julie Lerman and we had a great time. We talked about my courses, #include <C++>, CppNorth, Carbon, and a lot more.

I thought you might like to see a few "production stills" of how I set up the space to do the recording. It's always a challenge in a hotel room to get good light, keep the bed out of frame, and be reasonably near an available power plug. I did it!

Yes, I have my ring light clipped to a lampshade. And I brought the light, my good mike, and my mike stand to Toronto with me in my suitcase. Getting the laptop up high enough and at the right angle involved a little foraging in the room :-)

This was the view from my chair. (That desktop background is the view out of the Bridge of Sighs, in Venice.)

And here's the final video.It's about seventeen minutes; please do share the link with others.

Kate

The recordings from ACCU have been appearing over the last few weeks and now both of my talks are up:

• C++ And Beyond: Discussion is a panel discussion with Vittorio Romeo, Kevlin Henney, Nico Josuttis, and me, moderated by Bryce Lelbach. The fun starts just six minutes in when Nico declares C++ "fundamentally broken." Still, there is some positive and hopeful content. We should think about the languages we use and what we want from them. C++ is a language that changes, which has consequences, both good and bad.
• Become a Better Programmer by Using Words and Ideas From Casual Gaming is my closing keynote. Not a lot of syntax in here, but a new way of looking at some of the things you do at work, and how to approach those, that you may find helpful.

Going to conferences in person has many advantages, and I'm glad we're solidly back to doing that. But for the ones you can't attend, you can at least watch the sessions, and I highly recommend that you do.

Kate

The agenda for the Qt World Summit has now been released.

I'll be doing a half-hour version of a talk I've given only once before, "Am I a Good Programmer?" Many people have told me this is something they worry about pretty often.So at the end of November, we can discuss it together.

I've been lucky enough to speak in Berlin at several different conferences and I'm looking forward to being back there again. Would you like to join me? You can even get a discount of 10% if you use the code QtWS23_Kate -- register here.

Kate

Day 3 began with a terrific keynote from Jessica Kerr, I can write the code. But getting something done is another matter. I was so thrilled when she agreed to come and do a keynote, and this one didn't disappoint. I took pictures of several slides, always a good sign.

After a break it was time for Tony Van Eerd with Value Oriented Programming Part V: Return of the Values. There was plenty of pop culture here but also some darn good advice about making good abstractions, and what's good about them. Then out for lunch again ... I deliberately chose something different on my second trip to the market.

The afternoon started with Conor Hoekstra and New Algorithms in C++23. Conor makes these things look easy -- perhaps they actually are? Then the closing keynote, from Timur Doumler, called Contracts, Testing, and the Pursuit of Well Defined Behaviour. We sure have plenty of undefined behaviour to deal with:

Another amazing day in Toronto! Let's talk about what sessions I went to so far.

I started with Patrice Roy's Moving an Existing Project to C++ 20 for Fun, Beauty… and Results!. The first part set up a problem and showed some C++17 code to handle it. I was a little impatient during this part, because it was a lot of code and I would have done some of it differently (because I am doing C++20 which is the point of the talk) but I did notice that it was carefully written to be fast and readable. Then the fun started as things got shorter, simpler, and (proven with some measuring) faster using C++20 goodies.

Next was Ben Deane with Calendrical C++: std::chrono, History, Mathematics and the Computus. This very entertaining talk took a problem few of us really face in code (when is Easter next year?) and used it to show off what chrono can do with dates. Probably my favourite slide was the one to show when Thanksgiving is. When you get to it, you'll see why.

The first break of Day 1 was the "Canada Snacks" -- see the published menu for details. I've never put a blackberry on a Nanaimo bar, but they certainly were delicious.

I enjoyed And Then() Some(T) by Victor Ciura a lot, even though I had to duck out early. If you would say no to "are you using higher order functions today?" this is the talk for you. Because you almost certainly are, and knowing that will make a lot of things easier to understand.

For the last talk of Day 1 I had planned to attend Rud Merriam's A Journey into Ranges, Views, Pipelines, and Currying but some last minute schedule juggling as speakers ran into travel problems put it up against Timur Doumler with C++ and Safety. Safety is a timely topic, so I'll wait for the video to watch Rud's talk. Timur did an interesting review of what the word "safety" even refers to, why governments are starting to have an opinion, and whether C++ can ever be proven safe -- and why you should care.

We wrapped up the day with the conference dinner, a nice mix of old friends and new, speakers and not, and good food. I enjoyed the conversations a lot!

Day 2 started with a keynote from Ben Deane, Optimizing for Change. Some excellent advice in this talk even if I did find the dark background a bit of a challenge on some of the code slides.

I had an online meeting I couldn't miss, so I didn't go to another morning session. After my call I walked over to the St Lawrence Market to get some lunch. I wish more conferences were fully in the towns where they are held, and made it simple for attendees to walk out and experience a little sunshine and access a wider variety of food options.

The afternoon had more tough choices, but I went to Why Good Code is Relative by Daniel Withopf. A good summary of why you can't "just write it the fast way" and some solid code samples about how to actually follow advice like "avoid heap allocations."

Then I went to Get() into Retroactive Static Reflection by Vincent Tourangeau. This was a slideless talk, bopping around in a lot of surprisingly-readable code that showed how to get properties, introspection, and a lot of other things you think C++ doesn't have -- and all with C++11. I know I'll be watching the video when it's out because there were a few moments where I wanted to rewind and see something again!

For my last session of Day 2 I went to Writing C++ to Be Read by Vincent Zalzal. I really enjoyed this talk! It's the sort of talk I would give, but Vincent included a number of excellent points I had not made or heard before. He also had fantastic slides, with highlights to point out the parts he wanted to draw attention to, and good examples.

That left the Lightning Talks. Wow, these were so good! As always, some were funny, some showed something we needed to learn, and some were highly personal. I've seen a lot of lightning talks and I always get a lot from them. But I don't remember lightning talks from student volunteers and members of the organizing committee anywhere else. Worth staying up for!

Next, one more day!

Kate

So great that the second year of CppNorth has really happened, and started so darn well, too!

We started planning year two even before year one had happened, with a "next year" folder, and never really stopped. If you thought it was challenging to plan and host a conference with a pandemic still underway, that's nothing compared to doing the same thing during -- what are we calling it? -- an "economic downturn"? Getting attendees and sponsors took a lot of work, and luckily a pile of people who aren't me did that work.

Me, I showed up on Day 1 and did a keynote. I really enjoyed it, too. I'll post again when the video is up ... if you're an attendee you should be able to get the slides any time now.

This is 90 minutes of "stuff I've learned" like "Take Notes in Meetings" and "Always Take a Moment to Check" (aka Shift Left but for people) and the like. Many people told me it was helpful, which is very reassuring.

Kate

I had a lot on my plate when the MVP renewals appeared July 6th, but I'm delighted to number myself among this illustrious group again. I'm never worried that I haven't done enough for the C++ community, but I do sometimes worry if the C++ community is the target audience for the program any more. Still, I suppose it must be, since they renewed me.

I updated my profile on the MVP site a little.

Kate

Time for an update on the conferences I'm doing in 2023.

In April I did the closing keynote at ACCU, Grinding, Farming, and Alliances How words and ideas from casual gaming can make you a better programmer. My idea here is that certain things you are fine with in games, like "daily housekeeping", don't feel the same in your job. If you could feel better about them, you might be happier or more successful. Also, games pull on strengths like altruism and responsibility to get you to do things -- can your job do the same? Can your harness that to be more successful (however you define success) or happier at work? This talk was recorded and I expect it on the ACCU Youtube channel some time in June.

Next up will be "my own" conference, which is to say the one dearest to me as well as geographically nearest, CppNorth. There's still time to register for this: it will be in Toronto at the King Edward Hotel. July 17th and 18th are preconference workshops, and the 19th, 20th, and 21st are three jam packed days of sessions with evening activities Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. If you live in and around Toronto this is your chance to see famous speakers (and discover some new ones) without having to fly a long way. I recommend you get a hotel room though, so you can truly immerse yourself in the conference while you're attending. My keynote is Steps To Wisdom: some tips I want to share with you that I earned through hard experience.

In September I'll be returning to NDC Techtown, this time to deliver the closing keynote on Day 1. These days I choose conferences based on many factors and small friendly ones like CppNorth and NDC Techtown really appeal to me. Both attract very good speakers and I expect to learn things -- I know I did last year!

In November I'll be doing something I haven't done before -- I recommend doing something new at least once a year no matter how old you get. In this case it's Qt World Summit in Berlin, where I will have a small keynote. I look forward to new people and new ideas from this experience, and hope to reach some people who haven't heard me speak before.

It's not too soon to think about the 2024 season, for me anyway. If you'd like me to speak at your conference, you can see many of my previous talks on my YouTube playlist. Please check my Speaker Kit for the details of my preferences.

See you at a conference, I hope!

Kate

I’ve been thinking lately about a lesson I saw taught in a martial arts class over a decade ago. A young student was misbehaving. I knew this kid from field trips and other school activities, and he was doing typical things for him – not paying attention, calling out funny responses from the back row, making faces and showing off, that sort of thing. He was always a little difficult to manage but this particular day he was worse than usual. One of the instructors stopped the class and took the boy aside from the group. He picked up a lightweight rattan sword. They use these for practice – they’re very light, and they are made of several light sticks bundled together. They make a loud clattery noise when they hit, and use up most of the energy doing that, so they don’t hurt. They weigh very little.

The instructor got the student to sit or kneel, and hold his hands out straight in front of him at shoulder height. Then he held out the sword and asked the student to take it with both hands, holding the sword and his arms all parallel to the floor. Simple. You could do the same thing yourself right now with a ruler or a pencil or anything else rigid and lightweight. It’s trivial to hold your arms extended, elbows locked, hands a fixed distance apart (because they’re holding something that doesn’t bend or stretch.) Easy, right? By now everyone was watching to see what the actual punishment was going to be. Would the instructor now hit the student, or demand they do something difficult? (It was common in that class to assign pushups for misbehaviour, and I adopted the habit myself, giving my kids pushups in the grocery store if they were driving me crazy.) But no, the instructor just stepped back and said “just hold that as long as you can.” The kid grinned. Everyone else looked puzzled. It was trivially easy to do.

But if you try this yourself, you’ll soon discover that very quickly it gets harder. It starts to really hurt after just a few minutes. If you’re stubborn and you grit your teeth, you can keep going. This student was very stubborn. After a while though, his arms would occasionally droop down. “Either put it down or keep it up! Shoulder height! Arms straight!” the instructor would call and the student would try again and manage to get back into position. Eventually he was clearly in distress. The instructor told him “you can put it down whenever you want” but it was quite a while before he did. His muscles were clearly very sore.

On that day, the instructor didn’t explicitly close the loop. He seemed content to have found a way to get through to this student that classes were not his to disrupt and there were things the instructors could do that the student didn’t like. But years later, I saw a larger lesson in the choice of that particular exercise. Lifting that light sword (or the pencil or ruler you tried this with) is nothing. It’s really nothing at all. No effort. Anyone can do it. And at first, holding it is nothing also. If you had never lifted a pencil before, and you met someone who was struggling after holding one for many minutes, and you tried lifting a pencil yourself, you would be really puzzled. “Why are you complaining? This is super easy. There’s nothing to it! Anyone can do it!” The student’s misbehaviour was like this. Each little thing – the funny comment, the silly face, doing the move backwards – was in itself nothing. Easy to deal with or ignore. Not a problem. But enough of them add up. Just like the time holding the light weight. It becomes hard. It becomes painful. It becomes unbearable.

I really urge you to try this. How long can you hold the pencil or ruler out before you start to feel an effort? Before it hurts? Before you physically cannot do it any longer? Try predicting these times and then doing it.

The world is full of things that are trivial and nothing if you only experience them once, or once a decade, for a few minutes. It can be nearly impossible to imagine that these trivial things could ever add up to something painful. In 1970 (yes! 50 years ago!) a university professor coined the term microaggression for tiny moments of “you don’t belong” aimed at racial minorities, disabled people, women in male-dominated industries, gay people, and so on. People who haven’t experienced a steady diet of “you don’t belong”, however mild, often literally cannot imagine how it could add up to something painful. Sure, maybe you wince for a moment when someone assumes a group of developers are all male, or all straight, but it’s no big deal, right, and I’m sure the women know that when we say “men” we mean everyone, and the gay people know that when we say “wife” we mean wife, husband, partner, whatever. On its own, one tiny moment of “the only people I have to consider are X” is a little needle for people who aren’t X, but it’s such a tiny needle, who would complain, who would object, there was no nasty intent. Think about holding your arms out for 10 or 15 minutes and then think again about exclusionary language, policies that assume only married people have children, asking people “where are you from”, telling someone “you don’t look like a software developer”, making jokes about people’s weight or appearance, and all those tiny tiny little things that are nothing once, but that truly genuinely add up over time to real pain.

And then ask yourself: if it really doesn’t matter whether you say “men” or “people”, then why is it so important you keep saying “men”? That sounds like it actually does matter after all. If it’s no big deal and of course we all know that there are people who differ from you in some way, why are you not prepared to do the work of talking as though such people exist, instead asking them to do all the work of translating your literal words into what you probably meant, or would have meant if you had thought about it? How can you lessen some of the pain and effort other people have to put in all day, every day, day after day? It will be no big deal to you, right?

Kate

A lot of people say often "if you're comfortable, you're not learning", "the only way to grow is to get out of your comfort zone", "don't expect to enjoy changing yourself" and the like.

And you know what? This is wrong. Sure, sometimes when you're doing a new thing you don't know how to do, it feels weird and scary and you're a little embarrassed and a little lost. But not all learning is like that. Sometimes learning a new thing is joyful and exhilarating and marvelous. Sometimes you have a teacher who is reassuring and supportive, sometimes you're just discovering connections and trying things that work and it's just fantastic. Don't tell those people they're not learning! Learning can be one of the most pleasant and wonderful things we do. I try to live my life that way both while I'm learning and while I'm teaching.

I think it's some sort of leftover Calvinist thing: we're not supposed to like work, we're not supposed to find joy in good things, we're supposed to push ourselves and do them even though they're horrible. Think of sayings like "No pain, no gain", "Feel the burn", or "They call it work for a reason." Sure, some stuff is difficult and you don't really want to do it but you do it anyway because it's important, or you said you would, or someone's paying you, or you know you want the end result of it. But some stuff is fun and joyful and delightful and you do it with happiness and it's still important, still something you said you'd do, you still get paid, and you still get the end result. I remember teaching someone some stretching exercises and they said with complete surprise "I like doing these! I thought exercise was supposed to be horrible!"

How would it change your learning if you let yourself enjoy it? If you let go of the idea that learning only happens in discomfort? If you could feel yourself improving at whatever you're learning and enjoy that?

But that's not the worst of it. Yes, people are missing out on a ton of joy that they could tap by just sitting up and thinking "hey, I really like my work. learning this stuff is super fun. Wow, what a great time I'm having." But on top of that, there are a pile of "teachers" who basically make you feel bad, and if you object they say you're resisting learning. Fitness instructors who literally make the fat people cry while exercising, because "that's the only way they will change what they've been doing." Activists and influencers and everyone who wants to change your opinion starting with upsetting you and keeping you upset. "hey, don't blame me. If you're comfortable, you're not learning." "If you're happy, you're not growing." First, that's not true. And second, it doesn't then follow that if you make me uncomfortable or unhappy I magically grow and learn. You need to focus on teaching, leading, inspiring, educating, showing, demonstrating, and modelling.

Yes, I may feel clumsy as I learn a new technical skill, lost as I try to understand new facts, embarrassed as I realize things I did wrong in the past. When those come as a side effect of learning, I need to embrace them because discomfort can be part of learning and growing. But there isn't some short cut where you tell me I'm horrible, say things to upset me, and claim that upsetting me is proof you're a great teacher. It's not. There is no need for you to actively try to put me in a bad place. Sure, I may need to be ok with feeling bad as part of learning. But yelling at me, telling me I am not good enough, speaking roughly to me -- these aren't teaching skills. They're psychological tricks and I am not ok with them. Perhaps you truly believe it's important to cry in order to learn. Well, you're wrong.

I'm not saying everyone has to centre my happiness to teach me. What I am saying is that some teachers (and I have names) claim they don't care if they upset others, but that's a lie: they do care. Step 1 is to upset the learners. It's their trick to get people to listen, or to let themselves feel important, or to say they have changed a person by making them feel bad. If you meet a teacher like this, whether it's a fitness trainer, a culture improver at your workplace, a twitter influencer, a tech trainer, or a conference speaker, walk away. You can find someone to learn from who won't emotionally manipulate you as part of the process. You can learn in comfort, or in the discomfort that comes from realizing you have a lot to learn; you're not obliged to learn in artificial discomfort imposed by someone who thinks it makes them a better teacher to do that to you.

Kate

A little while ago, I recorded a chat with Adam Bell for the CoRecursive podcast. My episode is now published, and it's good. There's a transcript, which needs some help (C++ apparently sounds like syphilis to machine transcription), but will give you an idea of the topics we covered so you can decide to listen. It's definitely a conversation to listen to, with tone of voice and laughter and such being more important than in say, how to write generic lambdas or some other technical topic.

We basically elaborated on the 5 tips I covered in a lightning talk at Meeting C++ 2017, while I was still receiving treatment but knew that it was working and I wasn't dying after all. So the focus is on how to do your work and manage your time more than on anything specifically C++-related. We also talked a little about #include <C++> and the culture of this industry, and what I (with some friends) am trying to do about that.

Take a listen, and I hope you enjoy it.

Kate

Lately a lot of people have been asking me for help as they write C++ code. I’m usually happy and able to help. There are times, though, when I either cannot help, or choose not to help. I thought it might be helpful to explain some of these a little. It’s quite likely that other members of the community have a similar set of guidelines in their heads for when they do and don’t help people with code.

Warning: this is long. I think it's worth reading it all. You want a TL;DR? It’s this: if you want free mentoring and consulting from successful people, you can have it! All you need to do is ask. But if you expect your helpers to do most of the work in helping you, and to take instruction and direction from you, you’re going to get a lot less help than if you know how to be helped effectively.

The first choice is where and how you ask. People often email me, message me on LinkedIn, DM me on Twitter, DM me on the #include <C++> Discord, and so on hoping to get personalized, instant, one-on-one help from me. That’s not a good use of my time. I prefer to help in places where others will see the question and the answer. That helps more people. It also enables more people to help – so it produces better advice as well as helping those people learn and grow. Often, I learn from the times when other people chime in. So I encourage you to post on StackOverflow (if you have the sort of just-one-question, just-one-right-answer problem that fits there), or on the #include <C++> Discord, or some other public place where a number of people can see the question and the answer over time.

The rest of the issues have to do with how much work the person expects me to do, or how much they save me. Think about how you ask the very first thing you ask. Compare “here is a zip of all the files in my project can you tell me what’s wrong with it?” to “here is a link to an online compiler (Godbolt, wandbox, etc) showing a compiler error on line 43 that I don’t understand. Can you tell me how to fix that error?” Expecting someone to install things, trawl through multiple files, guess your question, and then solve your problem and explain it all to you is really too much. At least tell people what your problem is! Often people ask for help saying something like “it’s not working” or “what’s wrong with this?” and I don’t even know if it’s a compiler error or a runtime error or running fine but calculating the wrong answer. So before you post on the discord, for example, try to have a single crisp question, not just “help, it’s not working.”

• Show us your code, and your errors. And not as screenshots! You can copy the code into an online compiler like Godbolt or Wandbox, or if it’s less than 20 lines or so, paste it into the chat window – but please learn how to format it as code when you do that. Copy and paste the errors as text. That makes them much easier to read, and lets us copy and paste parts of them while explaining things to you. If you can’t show your real code because of how big it is or because it’s work-related, create a tiny example that shows the same problem and show us that. Stack Overflow has some tips on how to do that.  Whatever you do, do not free-type some code into the chat window that you think is the same as your problem, and then whenever people point out missing semi colons or undeclared variables, reply “oh yeah, that’s not really my code it’s just something I typed to give you the general idea.” Compilers (and runtimes) are picky and asking for help with something that’s vaguely like your real code (but not really) is pointless.

Now let’s assume you manage to get a conversation going with someone who is trying to help you. They solved that compiler error, for example, but now you have another one. As part of this process, I often make suggestions to people that they reject. I think they believe the suggestions are to make things easier for themselves in the long run, because they say things like “I can do that once it’s working.” I then have to spend a lot of effort explaining that I want them to do these things so that I can help them get it working. These suggestions include:

• Write good variable (and function) names. If your variables are all called i, n, c, r, s, and so on – I don’t know what they represent. If I ask you to change those to words like next, rate, total, and so on, or to words you think of yourself, that’s because I can’t understand your code (I don’t know the problem you’re trying to solve) without some help. Good names aren’t a someday thing that you paint over working code once it’s all good. They are how you make code other people can read. And you’re asking me to read this code. Make it readable.
• Use a debugger. When I ask “have you looked in the debugger to see the value of a before the loop?” an answer of “I don’t know how to use the debugger and I don’t have time to learn that today” is a great way to end our conversation. Real programmers use the debugger. We don’t have some magical compiler-simulator in our heads that can read code and tell you if it compiles or not, and we don’t have a magical runtime-simulator either. Sure, maybe I can tell at a glance that a is 0 before the loop and that’s why it’s not working, but in that case I would tell you so. It’s more likely that I want you to quickly check and see if it’s 0 or not. When you refuse to debug, you’re making it so much harder to help you. You need to learn to use whatever debugger is available to you, and you will probably save enough time today to make up for the time it takes to learn it.
• Add some tests. You don’t have to go learn a whole unit testing framework. But if you’re writing a function to do whatever, work out by hand what it does for simple values, and write a test harness that passes it those simple values. Then you can debug the test harness and see what the function returns and confirm whether or not it works for simple values. Whether you’re reversing a string in place, calculating the Fibonacci sequence, calculating sums of things, whatever, you should be able to think up simple test cases and test your code with them. And eventually, you should be writing tests as you write your code. It’s a good habit you can build now.
• Break up big things. You don’t have to embrace full OO or write functional programs, but don’t give me 1000 lines of code and ask me to load it into my head. Write some functions. Heck, throw in some comments and some blank lines. Show the structure of your code so it’s not a wall of text.

• Try the substitutions people tell you to try. A lot of times, people who are having a hard time don’t want to learn a new thing. I run into that situation all the time myself. I’m already frustrated and I’ve spent longer than I meant to and I can’t understand any of it, I don’t want you to tell me to go learn yet another thing right now. I have gained some wisdom over the years though, and it includes this: sometimes jettisoning all that half-understood not-really-working mess and doing something simpler is the best way forward. If someone tells you that vector would be better here, and offers you a few lines of code to use, just digging in your heels and refusing to try it isn’t going to lead you into learning. If you’ve got a problem because you’re trying to manage memory yourself by hand but you forgot about copying and so on, then using a smart pointer, or dropping the pointers altogether and using an object on the stack, is going to make a whole pile of work just fall away. The person advising you to try this knows how much effort it will save. You don’t, that’s why you came for help. It’s really frustrating to see a beginner insist on doing something the hard way (for no benefit), do it wrong, and refuse to accept any help other than “here is the precise and exact code to do that thing the hard way.” I don’t want to do things the hard way any more: why would I type out all the code for you?
• Try things that don’t matter to you, if the person who is helping you tells you that your code is harder to read the way you have it. Things like initializing member variables in a constructor with the : syntax, not between the braces, or adding some using statements – these may not matter to you, but making things too hard for a busy helper may mean that helper is too busy to help today. Or ever. I don’t want to teach you bad habits, I don’t want to teach you to “pretty things up” only once it’s working, and I don’t want to exhaust myself reading difficult code to spare you the trouble of doing the right thing. Also, when a person asks for advice but never takes any of it because they’re sure it’s not actually relevant to their problem, eventually the advice-giver will stop giving it. It’s pointless.
• Write your own code. If I tell you “the problem is that you’re not initializing x” don’t ask me to edit your code for you or paste in the new version of the function or whatever. You need to understand what you’re doing and that comes from writing the code yourself. If you don’t understand how to fix a problem that someone has told you about, ask them “how do I fix that?” If you can’t understand their answer, say “I don’t know what [whatever] is, can you explain it or show me?” Don’t just ask “what would that line of code look like?” That feels like you’re asking me to even do the typing for you.
• Work with whoever is talking to you. Maybe when you first ask, one person has a couple of thoughts, and those are good, but while you’re changing your code to see if that works, someone else chimes in. That’s great. It’s a group chat. Don’t tell them that you’re working with the first person or anything like that to reject their help. Consider all the suggestions you get. If you’re talking to someone and then they stop, that’s cool too. Many people pop into chat for 5 or 10 minutes waiting for a conference call to start, or while they’re eating lunch, and don’t stay long. People get called away from their keyboards. Don’t start pinging the person trying to bring them back or ask if they have any more thoughts or saying you’re still stuck. You can tell the room or channel as a whole that you’re still stuck. Maybe someone else will have some ideas. Your problem may end up solved over an hour or so with three different people. That’s a win!

I know, that’s a lot of advice. Thing is, you can get a lot of help from strangers on the internet, if you ask the right way. If you ask the wrong way, most people will just shrug and say “looks like you have a problem” and move along. They won’t even tell you why they’re not helping you! To get the marvelous free help, and to truly join the community, you have to put in a little effort. Trust me, it’s worth it!

Kate

Since late February, when I returned from a personal trip to Singapore, my travel and conference world has been shrinking in around me. Conference after conference has been cancelled (or postponed to next year which is the same thing), moved online, or put off to perhaps later this year. Of course, the rest of my world has also been shrinking: for the last 8 weeks I've left the house only a handful of times, and seen almost no-one. I'm sure it's the same for you. So it was quite a surprise to remember that my last conference wasn't actually that long ago: the video of it has just gone live.

This is a shortened version of Emotional Code for students, who don't all know C++ and don't all have a lot of experience with other people's code. I hope you like it. I've also updated my playlist, which has all the talk recordings I know about. If you're looking for conference substitutes around now, perhaps there's a talk of mine you haven't yet seen? Take a look at it now.

Looking forward to in-person conferences and live audio feedback once again,

Kate

This week I travelled to Montreal to deliver a keynote at CUSEC 2020, the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference. Everything was nicely arranged and I happily took the train from Oshawa to Montreal, then a short all-inside walk to the hotel where I checked in, told the organizers I was there, and settled in for an early night. I got a light dinner from room service but oddly could only eat half of it. Ah well, I thought, they fed us really well on the train, I'm probably just full. No big deal. I went to sleep.

About 10:30 I woke up and realized I needed to throw up. So I did. And did. And did. All night. For an extended part of the night it was every 45 minutes. It was bad. And then it got worse. Now I am not telling you this to gross you out or to overshare, but to get you, as a possible speaker or conference organizer, to consider this possibility if you have not done so before (I had not.) I felt perfectly normal when I left home, and even when I first arrived in town. Whatever food poisoning or virus got me, it hit fast and hard. When the sun finally dragged itself up over the Montreal horizon and into my eyes, I was exhausted, having not slept all night, and pretty sure I was not done throwing up (which it turns out I was not.) I got on Slack with my organizers and told them I could handle being tired but actually vomiting while on stage was a bridge too far for me. Could we switch with someone scheduled for Day 2?

Of course we could. They did that lovely duck trick, where above the water it all looks smooth and simple and you have no idea what amount of paddling and ruddering is happening underwater. Someone else did an opening keynote; my keynote moved to 11 am Day 2. A much needed bottle of ginger ale appeared at my door. I spent the day in bed and slowly returned to normal. I slept that night and did the keynote the next day, and very much enjoyed the rest of the conference. I didn't shake hands with anyone in case I was contagious. When the AV people started touching my laptop I gave them hand sanitizer.

So, if this happened to you, would you be able to come up with a plan B? Do you travel with anti-nausea meds? (I do, for airsickness, and took some to help me sleep during the day since they sedate me. They had no hope of working during the worst of it, but they still had value.) Do you have a little bottle of hand sanitizer with you all the time? (I do, and always will.) Do you know how to reach your organizers with some urgency when you can't leave your room? Organizers, I hope you would all react as smoothly and quickly as my CUSEC hosts did. Ellen and Afreen were ultra professional, as was everyone else I dealt with.

You don't want to think about it, I know. But -- you should, anyway. It doesn't take long to have a disaster recovery plan. Swapping two keynotes was the obvious choice, and it worked because the keynoters were staying for the whole conference not just popping in for their morning. A little prior preparation can predict proper performance, or something like that.

Kate

Every once in a while, I make a big change in how I plan and manage my speaking engagements. Early in the last decade, I decided to speak only at conferences I would happily pay to attend, and that improved my life dramatically. Instead of trying to justify a week away from home and the office in which I would try to keep up on emails from a hotel room or a hallway couch, while surrounded by people who didn't care about the stuff I cared about, I started looking forward to a week of learning and growing, of coming home knowing more than when I left, and of meeting my heroes and getting to see my friends.

While this was an important change, it was only a change in my decision criteria, and not in my overall process of deciding where to speak. I would get an email, or see a tweet, or otherwise become aware that a conference was going to happen, and then I would decide, on a case-by-case basis, if I wanted to submit to that conference. Sometimes I would have to decline because I had already submitted to another one at roughly the same time, without realizing the overlap. In mid 2019, I changed that. I listed out all the C++ conferences I knew of, and roughly when they happened. Then my partner and I went through the list, noting when various family events are happening, when we want to go on vacation, and other "big rocks" that conferences have to fit around. We talked about how many conferences I wanted to speak at, and whittled down the list to that many.

Now, as each conference opens a Call for Papers, if it's on my list, I submit, and if it's not, I don't. Of course, my talks aren't always accepted. I set myself a goal to speak at two non-C++ conferences in 2020. I was invited to one, but after I agreed they changed their dates and that conflicted with something else I had accepted. I submitted to another and they declined my talk. But one has accepted, and I have accepted another invitation, so I will be speaking at two non-C++ conferences for sure.

Expect to see me at:

• January, Montreal: CUSEC 2020 (Canadian University Software Engineering Conference) - keynote (and a Meetup while I'm in town, come ask about technical speaking)
  
• March, Bristol, UK: ACCU - Naming Is Hard, Let's Do Better
• May, London, UK: SDD - Naming and Emotional Code

July 21st, 1969 I (with my parents) moved to Canada for the second time. The first time, I had been an infant, and the move had been temporary: my father was doing his PhD at Carleton University in Ottawa. When he completed it, we went back to England as the plan had always been. We had grown from a family of 3 to a family of 4 in the meantime. But when they got back to England, they missed Canada a lot. So, by 1969, they had found a way for the now 5 of us to return. Originally it was to Ottawa and a job in a government research lab for my father. But within less than a year he decided to take a chance on the very new University of Waterloo and he worked there (with consulting clients and inventions and other side projects) until he retired to Nova Scotia.

I often warn friends who are considering emigrating that if you do, you are likely to raise children who think emigrating is ok: my Canadian-born brother lived in Japan, Europe, and the US for decades before settling in Vancouver. My UK-born sister has been in Ireland, England, and now Wales for a similar length of time. I have two other sisters and one of them has also changed continents a few times and now lives in England. Me, I've stayed put. I like it here and couldn't imagine living anywhere other than the Ontario countryside, though I sure do like to visit other places!

I remember very little of the move and the change of countries. We had been told of the rabid animals (there is no rabies in England) and the importance therefore of never letting a squirrel or chipmunk near you. Also of the cold, which I didn't remember from my first time. While I can't remember any of the moon landing hoopla at all, I do remember one scene from the airport as we arrived. We approached two doors, one for Canadians and one for all others. Well not doors, more like archways in a wall. And some official insisted that my brother go through the Canadian archway. He would have been 6 or 7 and my parents resisted but this official was adamant and said it would be fine. Which it was, because there was no wall between the two areas so it was a separation of a minute or so in full sight. We went through the arches at the same time but when we got through, this official knelt down to my brother's height and said "welcome home, little man" to him. I have other memories, of being bullied at school for my accent, of clashes with teachers who literally refused to teach me things I didn't know because "we covered that last year", of amazing beauty and nature and discoveries of all kinds, but that moment is one of those that really sticks with me. This place is home for me too.

Kate

I just published a small course on Pluralsight called Advanced Debugging with Visual Studio 2019. It covers IntelliTrace and Code Map, two features that are only in the Enterprise Edition of Visual Studio. Many people don't know about them, so I put together a quick introduction.

Here are some of my other current courses:

• Visual Studio 2019 Getting Started - what you need as a new user of Visual Studio to start using it. There are a variety of other Visual Studio courses, and pretty much all of the material from my 2017 one is still applicable, so don't take just this one or you'll be missing some really powerful techniques.
• Beautiful C++: Updating Legacy Code - I really enjoyed writing this course and if you maintain old C++ code, I think it will make your life a lot easier. It discusses both specific patterns to update (and why) and overall strategic approaches (not mechanically replacing every incidence of one pattern with a newer pattern.)
  
• C++ Fundamentals Including C++ 17 - this is the go-to course for developers who want to learn C++ today. Whether you never did any, or did some a decade or two ago, this course will cover the syntax, library, and best practices you need. If you've never programmed in any language, try Learn How to Program with C++ instead.
  
• Using Stack Overflow and Other Stack Exchange Sites - we all go to Stack Overflow when we're stuck. But a lot of us are bad at it, because it doesn't work like other sites. Take a little time to improve this skill and you'll get better and faster answers. You might even become one of those high-rep users who others admire!
• Beautiful C++: STL Algorithms - Stop writing raw loops and you will get more readable code with less effort. The library has so much waiting for you and this course will help you make sense of it all.

In early April I was lucky enough to go to Bristol in the UK for the annual ACCU conference. This has been an aspirational conference for me, one I attended before speaking at and am always delighted to attend. This year I was invited to keynote, and it turned out to be the closing keynote, which meant I was not done with all my talks until the conference was over! Nevertheless I enjoyed the week tremendously.

I flew to England overnight Saturday night. People often ask me how, given the fatigue issues I have left over from the whole surviving incurable cancer thing, I am able to travel. One reason is that when I travel, I only travel on travel days. I don’t try to work at the airport, on the plane, etc. I read a book or listen to music or just relax. On overnight flights, I sleep. I also schedule a few days to adjust to the time zone without having to think hard or meet important deadlines, like finishing my talk. On this trip, I spent two days visiting Cardiff, which is actually where I was born, with my sister who is planning to move there. It was marvelous fun watching a family explore and discover their new home town, and going to places I have seen on TV or in pictures.

Tuesday I did a private corporate talk about #include<C++> and diversity issues. It was very well received and I might offer it to other companies as a result. I always buy a train pass when I go to the UK and it got a good workout on this occasion. Back in Bristol I was able to relax and know I was ready for the conference.

After a lovely opening address by Russel, we had an illuminating keynote from Angela Sasse.  Security can’t be left until the end or handled by a separate group who fight the developers. Afterwards I took some time to meet up with more friends and spend some time at the #include table. After lunch, a very good talk from Jonathan Boccara on reading unfamiliar code.  I loved the map analogy and the way he showed using a call stack to increase your mapped area. Then a workshop from Gail Ollis on Helping Developers to Help Each Other which really brought home to me once again how important tactile artifacts – things you can pick up, put down, wave around, put next to each other and so on – can be to encourage open and complete communication.  The recording stops when the hands on part starts – just one of those things you can only get by attending in person. The talks wrapped up with Lightning Talks and I did one – my first time doing so at ACCU. I was not able to stay up for the evening reception beyond a quick “hey! Great to see you!” to a handful of people. There were plenty of talks I couldn’t get to – recordings for me to watch later!

Day 2 started with a Herb Sutter keynote.   I’ve read the paper but was really happy to hear it as a talk, and to hear the motivations behind enabling more people to use the whole language.  Then I needed some down time before my talk right after lunch. I gave an updated version of “Nothing” and as always at ACCU got some great questions that will go into the next version of the talk – or some other one.  Then I kept to tradition by doing the Pub Quiz, entertaining as always for the don’t-write-this-at-work code and marveling at how some folks know a lot of dark corners! Another round of lightning talks and an early night, meaning I couldn’t attend the Bristol Girl Geeks dinner as I had planned.

The Day 3 keynote was low on code and high on insight as Paul Grenyer talked about growing a community while dealing with the ups and downs of life in general.  Then to a fascinating talk by Dom Davis about communicating, with significant meta content that I really enjoyed.  I spent the lunch break at the #include table, and then dove into a variety of little talks – 15 and 20 minute ones. I was starting to tire and didn’t pay as much attention as I should have, but let me recommend Alex Chan’s reminder that the tech we build can hurt people when it’s being used as designed.  I took a break to be ready for the Conference Dinner where I was able to catch up with old friends and meet a few new ones.

Finally Day 4. I started with Kevlin Henney and a talk with a similar title to my “Nothing” but very different content.  Another break, another lunch at the #include table, and then some down time before my closing keynote. I updated the beginning of this talk since the C++ on Sea keynote, and I think this improves it. More great questions after and I think more material to work in there somehow. Then the close of the conference, a certain amount of hanging around not wanting it to end, and up to my room for another early night and to get ready to go.

Sunday all I did was take the train to the airport, fly home (sleeping a little on the plane) and drive home. A lot to process, as always after ACCU. And when I got home, a lot to catch up on, which is why this has taken a few weeks to write up!

Kate

I get a lot of requests to speak at conference now. More than I can possibly accept! This is a marvelous problem to have, and I'm delighted that there are so many relevant conferences and that a lot of them want me to be there. Sometimes if I decline a conference, it's just because I am doing something else in that time frame - I try not to do two conferences in the same month, for example - or the travel would be too far. But there are other reasons, so I wrote a little list of requirements and preferences. If you're running a conference, please check this list before you ask me to speak. If you're a speaker, consider putting your own list together. We can make conferences better!

And yes, I am working on a much longer list of what makes conferences great. It's over 4 densely packed pages right now and likely only to get longer. I will advise any conference-runner who asks me and genuinely wants to improve. Want my opinion of your badge, website, code of conduct, or the like? I'm happy to help.

Kate

We need to talk about the word “guys” and whether or not it means people. Well, to be accurate, whether or not it means people to all the people who hear it. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t. Not to all of them. Maybe it does to you. I used to think it did to me. But now I’m not so sure it ever did. And for sure, there exist some people to whom it doesn’t. Take a look at this really non-scientific poll in which only “hey guys” was actually considered gender neutral: . There’s a whole section of the #include<C++> resources about the word “guys”. 

But let’s rewind for a minute. If you’re a man, you may not have noticed, but in North American and English-speaking European cultures, two things are true, to the vast majority of people:

• Men means people
• People means men

As a woman, this is something I have come to learn. Men are people. Women are a special case. People often doesn’t include women. If you think that’s ridiculous, please react to this sentence:

On average, people have slightly less than one ovary

Yeah but, come on, I can’t possibly mean that, right? I mean it’s 2018. How can “people” possibly mean men? Take a look at these quotes from reputable medical sites:

The American Heart Association says “People at high risk of heart attack should take a daily low-dose of aspirin (if told to by their healthcare provider)” and that “heart attack survivors regularly take low-dose aspirin.”

The Mayo Clinic says, to a nongendered “you”, “If you've had a heart attack or stroke, your doctor will likely recommend you take a daily aspirin unless you have a serious allergy or history of bleeding. If you have a high risk of having a first heart attack, your doctor will likely recommend aspirin after weighing the risks and benefits.”

But it turns out, as WebMD says, “when it came to preventing a first heart attack, different trials got different results. Why? Studies that looked predominantly at men found that aspirin helped. Trials that looked predominantly at women found no effect.” Yet the general-purpose medical web sites are still advocating that “people” should do something that in fact is only helpful for men, rather than for people.

You can see the same thing in almost any store: razors and women’s razors, lego and girl’s lego, hammers and women’s hammers, even laxatives and women’s laxatives. The default person is a man. Women are a special case and are not always included in the general “people.”

Or take a look at these headline examples from a blog entry I recommend reading in its entirety:

• ...there are so few able-bodied young adults around. They have all gone off to work or look for work, leaving behind the old, the disabled, the women and the children.   [so women are not able bodied young adults?]
  
• A 45-year old man has been charged with assaulting his next-door neighbour’s wife   [doesn't she live next-door too?]

So, if people means men, then even if guys also means people, it still means men. So we can argue whether “guys” is or isn’t gender neutral, but for an awful lot of both men and women, “people” isn’t even gender neutral. I think it’s fair to say, though, that guys is even less gender neutral than people.

The key is this: you might mean to include women when you say guys. And most of the room might hear it as including women, too. But some of them will not. And you can’t tell who feels that way. So eliminating “guys” from your vocabulary will improve the experience of listening to you for some people.

How can you do it? What can you say instead? Well in a lot of cases, you can just drop it. For sentences like “What do you guys think?” “What I’m here to show you guys today is” and the like, you can just use “you.” Sometimes you might want “all of you”. “Some guys think” can become “some people think” or get more specific – “some developers think”, “some managers think”, “some customers think” – you’re not only eliminating an irritant from your talk, but you’re being more precise and conveying more information. And you’re avoiding “people” which, as I’ve shown above, isn’t actually gender neutral to most of those who hear it.

If you’re talking in the singular, this becomes even more important. “Some guy asked for this feature so it got added” or “you know somewhere the guy who wrote this is thinking” or “I need a guy from your group to take the lead on this” is just always wrong. Yet the more you say “guys” to mean “bunch of people of whatever gender, I don’t care about gender”, the more you will say “guy” to mean just one person, and those who hear you will hear gender. Instead, you can’t go wrong with “someone”, or again being more specific – the developer who wrote this, for example.

The hard part isn’t figuring out how to reword the sentence to avoid the word guy or guys. The hard part is breaking the habit. I’m working on it, because I think it’s worthwhile. I encourage you to work on it too. Chances are, no-one will ever notice. That’s the thing about politeness and taking the time to be sure you’re not bumping someone with your elbow. No-one ever got off a plane and tweeted how great it was that the person next to them kept their elbows to themselves, or smelled ok, or was quiet. But it’s still worth taking the effort to be the great seatmate, and in the same spirit it’s worth taking the time to change your speech patterns a tiny bit so that some of your listeners don’t feel excluded.

Kate

Next year, I'll be keynoting a new C++ conference, C++ on Sea. I'm really looking forward to it. A little while ago, they ran a "tweet why you want to go" contest for a free ticket, and said that if the winner already had a ticket, the conference would help the winner give away the ticket.

Can you guess where this is going? I won the ticket. I already have one, so you can win mine. Here's what you need to do:

• Choose a way to "give back" to your community before, during and after attending. This might be blogging, tweeting, hosting a local meetup where you talk about what you saw and recommend specific talks for others to watch later, or even activities at the conference like giving a lightning talk.
• Gather supporting links - to your blog, your repo, your YouTube Channel, the meetup site, and so on
• If your plan won't fit in a tweet, put it somewhere that it will fit. Include lots of links - I want people to find your blog, channel, meetup etc even if you don't win
• Tweet me (@gregcons) with your plan or a link to it. I will retweet. Focus on what you will give if you are able to attend the conference.(It's not that I don't care whether you are deserving or can't afford to go or whatever, I do, but I am going to focus on how you will share your good fortune with others.)
  
• If you're not on Twitter, post on my public Facebook page. You can't just email me because the idea is to promote those links to blogs, channels, meetups, and suchlike.

That's it! I'll choose someone, probably by filtering to everyone who is offering to do something generous and then randomly choosing one, but I reserve the right to choose the single person who comes up with the most amazing plan. I'll tell the conference that you get my ticket.

Fine print: this is just admission to the conference. Not travel or hotel. Not paid time off work. You'll need to cover that yourself. I suggest that telling your boss you won the ticket because of your community involvement might be quite helpful as far as that is concerned :-). And while I can't force you to keep your promise, I will remember if you do, and that will probably be a good thing for you over and above the rewards of doing those good things for the community.

Good Luck!

Kate

Here's what's coming up over the next few quarters:

• August 27-30: NDC Techtown (two talks)
  
• Sept 23-29: CppCon (preconference day; main conference talks not yet announced)
• Oct 18th-19th: Pacific++ (two talks)
• Submissions are still open so if you want to join me in Sydney as a presenter, get on that!
• Nov 15th-17th: Meeting C++ - I will not be speaking here (I just can't fit it in), but I want you to know it's happening
• Feb 4th-6th 2019: C++ on Sea (keynote at this brand new conference)
• April 2019 - ACCU (nothing announced yet, but I plan to be there)

I consider it an absolutely marvelous problem that there are so many C++ conferences I can't go to them all! There are a number of smaller conferences that draw primarily from one country or region, and more meetups than I can keep track of. I'm open to talking at a meetup if I happen to be traveling to a city for business anyway, but I don't think I can get up above 5 or 6 conferences a year, especially if some of them involve keynotes, plenary sessions, or workshop days. It's a lot of work!

Hope I get to see plenty of people in these various places,

Kate

More and more conferences are making talks available on YouTube. I've decided to put the links on a playlist to make them easier for me to find. You can use it too!

At the moment this includes 4 CppCon talks (2 in 2014, 1 in 2015, I missed 2016 for health reasons, and 1 in 2017), my Meeting C++ keynote, my Meeting C++ lightning talk, my ACCU 2018 talk on simplicity, and both parts of the Munich C++ Meetup version of the same talk. It's in two parts because we had a break in the middle for pizza.

When more of my videos get uploaded, I'll try to keep the playlist up to date.

Other recent appearances include episode 148 of CppCast.

Kate

This week, I’ve been in Salt Lake City for the Pluralsight Author Summit and the first-ever PluralsightLIVE event. What a great time! This is my first time on a plane in over two years, and it is terrific to be out traveling again.

Pluralsight takes great care of its authors and that started with a lovely box of goodies in my room the first night.

Tuesday we all got together to hear about the past growth and future vision for Pluralsight, and to get a sneak peek at some things that would be announced later in the week. And of course, for Aaron to get a selfie with the authors!

In the afternoon, we had open sessions where we learned from some Pluralsight staff we don’t normally get to meet, and from each other. What makes you a great author in the eyes of your editor and the other people who help to get your material published and live? How can you get your courses recorded faster? Geeky talk about microphones and other tools of our trade, of promo videos on YouTube, and so many other things we all really wanted to talk about.

PluralsightLIVE itself started Tuesday night with a reception in the partner pavilion and an evening event I wasn’t able to stay up for.

That's my shirt being printed on the spot for me!

That's the very popular candy dispenser array.

I’ve been to a LOT of conferences and most of them look pretty generic. Here there was just so much effort showing: the fun activities like huge Jenga, Connect 4, and similar games, the couches everywhere (with power and USB ports so you could charge whatever you needed to charge), the large easy-to-spot-and-read signage, and more. It was clear the organizers were really caring about the wellbeing and happiness of all the attendees.

There were a lot of keynotes. Wednesday and Thursday both had keynotes the whole morning, and Thursday also had an afternoon keynote. These were entertaining, inspirational, educational, and really worth my time. I was especially looking forward to Joel Spolsky on Wednesday morning and he didn’t disappoint. He was funny and open. He also announced that Stack Exchange users will all get 60 free days of Pluralsight training. I hope some of them use it to take my Stack Exchange course! Then he liked my tweet afterwards so that was fun.

(If you want to take one of my courses, and don't have a subscription, there's a grey rectangle over the right that says Author: click it and you can get a ten-day free trial.)

When I wasn’t in keynotes, I was meeting other attendees and Pluralsight authors. Many of the authors are friends I haven’t seen in far too long, so it was tough to tear myself away, but I forced myself, because meeting learners is what this week was about for me. It was especially helpful to talk to managers and team leaders who want to know how their people are using their subscriptions. The Pluralsight IQ announcement [link] was very well received both by learners who wanted to show off their scores, and managers who wanted to track a team’s progress.

I took the C++ assessment, but I zipped through it a little too quickly and some questions needed more thought than I gave them. Still, I did ok:

After I tweeted my results, a whole pile of my C++ tribe also got their scores, and I even outscored a few! (Plus, I think they found a few bugs in the assessment – I’m going to get them fixed.)

The afternoon keynotes on Thursday wrapped up with Michelle Obama talking about diversity, education, children, and much more. I hadn’t heard her speak before other than sound bites on the news, and I was really impressed. She was warm and funny and willing to show irritation or frustration as well as the polished pleasantness I was expecting.

Next year’s dates have already been announced: the week of August 26th, 2018. I’m planning to be there. If you take Pluralsight courses (and come on, you should be taking Pluralsight courses) then consider it too. There was a lot of good content in a wonderful atmosphere, a chance to meet all kinds of interesting people, and a few days to put learning and growing front and centre – time well spent for me.

Kate

This year's innovation at CppCon is a Meet the Speakers Dinner Thursday night. It's pretty expensive ($100) because the venue is charging a lot for it, but here's your chance to relax over dinner with many of the speakers from CppCon. If you've registered for the conference but haven't bought a dinner ticket yet, please do! We want to meet attendees and this is a great way to do it. I've been an attendee at speaker dinners at other conferences and I have to say it's always been a highlight of the conference for me. Career advice from Bjarne himself over (excellent) dessert? Yes please!

I can't guarantee you Bjarne (or even me) but you will be asked if there's someone you want to sit with, and the organizers will do their best to accommodate you.

Well, this is exciting!

I was nominated, along with scores of others, but wasn't sure my nomination would succeed, partly because I was so much less active in 2016, and partly because my focus on client development in C++ is not always front-and-centre these days. But I'm happy to report I will continue to be a Microsoft Regional Director until at least June 30th, 2019.

What do RD's do? Well, I've explained this before: We don't work for Microsoft, we aren't really tied to regions, and we don't direct anything. Hence the name :-). We are a group of business-oriented influencers who go beyond technical excellence to really make a difference. Chances are, you know many other RDs already. You see us on conference rosters (and helping to run them), running podcasts (DotNetRocks, among many others), running community events, leading companies that are moving the needle when it comes to what technology does for the world. The number varies each year as people shift roles and priorities, but it's typically between 100 and 200. Far less than the number of MVPs. It's a heck of a club to be part of, and I'm delighted that I still belong.

Kate

ps: If you're looking for me on the RD map, you have to look in Wales. Whatever mapping tech it's using just can't handle there being more than one Pontypool. Sorry about that. In reality I'm just outside Toronto, Ontario.

Tl;dr – I have (had?) Stage IV metastatic melanoma. This is a diagnosis whose current “5 year survival” rates are about 5%, meaning that 95% of people with this diagnosis die in 5 years or less, generally a lot less, regardless of the treatments they attempt: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. However, that is entirely based on people diagnosed more than 5 years ago, and everything has changed in the last 5 years, making that number obsolete. I have had a very challenging summer and fall 2016. I have a fantastic result though: using treatments that have become available only in the last 5 years, I have seen my tumours shrink, and many of them disappear.  My symptoms are almost all gone, I am not taking any pain medication, I am exercising regularly and my energy levels are almost back to normal. My treatment continues, and my life is not entirely normal, but it is amazingly great. I look forward to returning to work, though I am still not sure when that will be. We live in the future.

So details, for those who want details. In hindsight, my first symptom was fatigue in the fall of 2015. I came home from an amazing 5 week transPacific trip, and within days was in bed with a wicked cold we all called the Chilean Death Flu. When I got over that, I had to work long hard days to get ready for CppCon, then was at CppCon running days from 8am to 10pm or later, so not surprisingly I was exhausted by the time that was done. But I never really got over that exhaustion and got back to my regular energy. This is a hindsight thing, because fatigue is a cancer symptom, but I never went to the doctor and said “I’m so tired, let’s find out why.” In January after a dentist appointment, I noticed a slight lump and soreness under my chin, but I forgot all about it as the rest of my busy life continued to happen. By April, I had noticed it again (it was larger) and this kicked off a round of medical things that just kept escalating. Blood tests, ultrasound, cat scan, biopsies, more cat scans, pet scans, MRIs, more biopsies – oh, many many more biopsies – and never any conclusions. I had to cancel a headline appearance at an August conference, and scale back my CppCon commitments a bit at a time, eventually deciding I couldn’t even attend. Through all this, the lump, whatever it was, kept growing. It was starting to hurt. Eventually, I had surgery to remove it, enabling all kinds of tests to be run on the removed material. Throughout this I kept the process private, discussing with only my very closest family members. Because I didn’t know what I had, I didn’t want to tell colleagues, clients, conference organizers or even friends “I may be sick, or not, and if I am it could be anything.” So I kept it to myself.

It was September when I officially got the news. The now-removed lump was melanoma. Since it wasn’t presenting on the skin (as a mole or other visible surface blemish), it was a metastasized melanoma. And since the cat scans showed that lumps (growths, nodules, masses, lesions – doctors almost never say tumour) were also in my lungs (and getting larger between scans), it was Stage IV, and distant. Here’s Wikipedia on the matter:

When there is distant metastasis, the cancer is generally considered incurable. The five-year survival rate is less than 10%. The median survival is 6–12 months. Treatment is palliative, focusing on life extension and quality of life. In some cases, patients may live many months or even years with metastatic melanoma (depending on the aggressiveness of the treatment). Metastases to skin and lungs have a better prognosis. Metastases to brain, bone and liver are associated with a worse prognosis. Survival is better with metastasis in which the location of the primary tumor is unknown.

Literally every time I met a doctor in September, they told me another place it had spread. There was the unknown primary, which my own immune system had already cleared away. The neck lump. The lung tumours, first detected in May and having multiplied and grown all summer. The liver. The spine. The surgeon had no more to offer me – there were too many to consider removing them. The radiation specialist also didn’t want to do anything – the neck lump might come back, but “it’s not a survival issue,” he said, meaning that I would doubtless die from the lung or liver involvement, or some other new lump, long before any regrowth of the neck lump had a chance to hurt me. And radiation to the neck would ruin my voice and quality of life. They both repeatedly used the word incurable, just as Wikipedia does. One of them praised me for crying “because it means you understand.” I made lists of paperwork to update (our wills) and find (my life insurance policies) and started thinking about what music I wanted played at my memorial ceremony. After all, those facts are pretty cut and dried. If the median is 6-12 months, you have some months. Maybe 18 months if you’re super lucky, maybe 3 if you’re not. It’s actually a lot of work to “get your affairs in order” and I was super tired and found thinking very difficult, so it was even harder than you would think it would be.

But, here’s where things take a turn. The surgeon told me that things have really changed for melanoma just in the last few years. That great strides are being made. The radiation specialist told me that what I needed was something systemic that would attack everything at once. They referred me to a medical oncologist. And he was like no-one I have ever met.

For one thing, he looked at me – my face, not his feet or my feet – when we talked. And he smiled. He told me I had come to the right place, and that he knew what to do for me. He’d already run some tests on the lump and ruled out one set of treatments, but felt I was a very good candidate for another set. This involved being in a study, getting a treatment that was technically experimental. (Technically because it involves combining two drugs, both of which are already approved in Ontario for treating this, but the combination is not. Since then, the combination has been approved in the US. Things are moving quickly in this area.) He started talking about what percentage of his patients survive and I interrupted him (probably a bit sulkily, because honestly I wasn’t having a great month) and said “for a while, anyway.” He grinned. “I have patients who I have to wait for them to die of old age so I can declare them cured. That’s my plan for you.” So then that was all three doctor’s offices that I cried in, but this time because he gave me hope.

So that brings us to the weird world of cancer and what “cured” and “curable” and such mean. The gold standard is to simply be alive 5 years after you’re diagnosed. That is why diagnosing “early” increases survival rates – not only because people live longer than they otherwise would have (sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t) but because the survival time is measured from diagnosis, not from when some particular stage is reached. If you are diagnosed a year early and nothing changes about the age at which you die, you still survived a year longer after diagnosis than you would have with a later diagnosis.  At first, there was so little that could be done for cancer that basically you either lived or died, and if you managed to still be alive after 5 years, you would almost certainly go on to die of something else like a heart attack or old age. But now people are being diagnosed so early, and even very aggressive cancers are being held back for a while, that the 5 year mark isn’t necessarily a sign that you’re cured. Doctors like to tell people they’re in remission if they don’t happen to have any tumours at the moment, a word that carries with it a promise that the cancer is pretty sure to come back later. You really can’t draw any conclusions about cancer in general, but there may be some stats available about your particular type and stage of cancer.  

So, in order for the official cancer folks to think I’m cured, I need to live 5 years after my diagnosis. It has barely been 6 months. So I’ll be waiting a while on that. And anyway, some folks are now more interested in “progression free survival” which is not only being alive, but not “progressing” during that time – getting new tumours, or having your old ones grow. You also hear about disease-free survival, which is having no symptoms and no signs of tumours on your scans, and event-free survival, which is not having “events” such as needing a surgery, or even reporting a particular pain. There seems to be a belief that three years of disease free survival after melanoma means you can relax, it’s not coming back. I guess for me the clock on that has only recently started, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, according to the current definition of cured, nobody gets cured of what I have, because the people diagnosed 5 years ago and earlier are the only ones whose outcomes are considered, and they pretty well all died. (I’ve had friends tell me stories of people who died of melanoma 5 and a half years after diagnosis, making them count as survivors in the cure math, but not, in the end, surviving it.) So it’s incurable. But in the last 5 years, they’ve started an entirely different kind of treatment, which works, and people on this treatment see their tumours disappear and their symptoms stop and they just return to their regular life. For how long? Well, it’s not possible to know yet, since the number of people who have 5 years of disease free survival, or even three, is very small. It seems like a forever cure. But it can’t be declared one because there just hasn’t been enough time go by yet to draw that conclusion. And that’s why the medical oncologist says he is waiting for his patients to die of old age. Only then can he conclude they never died of the cancer coming back.

Right, diversion  over, what is this treatment I was offered? The two drugs Ipilimumab and Nivolumab. They are monoclonal antibodies. They work by getting your immune system to remove the cancer. This is entirely different from chemo, which poisons the cancer and most of the rest of you too. People's immune systems clear away small cancers all the time. For example, I must have had a "primary" somewhere on my skin. I never saw it, my doctor never saw it, so I must have cleaned it up - although unfortunately not before it spawned off some more cells. That’s normal, a melanoma forms, it gets tidied up.  The observation on Wikipedia that people with unknown primaries do better is probably related to people with unknown primaries having a proven ability to clean melanoma away. The recent breakthrough is understanding that when tumours get to a certain size, they prevent the immune system from cleaning them up – they develop a sort of “cloaking system” that keeps the immune system away. So these two drugs, one ramps up your immune system and the other interferes with the preventing so the tumours no longer defend themselves against (or hide from, or turn off) the immune system. My body just has to do what it did before and clear it all away.

I am in a study because these drugs are not yet approved in Canada to be used in combination like this, though each are approved alone. They have already done studies comparing dose levels of the drugs and found, rather unexpectedly to me, that people getting different doses have the same success rate. This study is to see if they have the same side effects. Personally, I consider that aim secondary to getting me cured, but that's the technical aim of the study. The side effects from these drugs are all the same - inflammation and overactive immune responses. That might mean a rash, or swelling of something. If your eyes swell, that's not as bad as if your heart swells, or your thyroid. I had to commit to being able to drop everything and head to downtown Toronto if I get any kind of side effect at all. That means I can't travel for the duration of the study. The side effects, I was warned, may also keep me from working or from doing some of the things I normally do. So far 100% of the study people get side effects, the issue is only how severe they are. I may end up treated with steroids if they get too bad. As a side note, I understand that these drugs alone (not counting the time and effort of doctors, nurses, scan techs, and so on) cost about $200,000 a year. Being in the study means that the study sponsor, not the Ontario health care system, covers the cost of the drugs. There’s no cost to me for any of it; my only expenses have been hundreds of dollars on hospital parking (don’t get me started), cab and transit fares, and the occasional overpriced food and drink from hospital food courts.

So far, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky about side effects, having by far the least of anyone in the study locally. I may have some thyroid damage, but that’s all. Nonetheless the impact on my day to day life has been total. Working became impossible – partly because I was constantly going to downtown Toronto for appointments, and partly because of symptoms I began to experience as the tumours grew and spread. In less than a week I went from popping out for a 2 km hike while my Thanksgiving turkey cooked, to being unable to get out of bed. I spent weeks at a time in bed. I spent almost a week in the hospital after I got severely dehydrated, possibly because of the liver involvement messing with my metabolism. I pulled muscles coughing (because my lungs were full of tumours) and I may also have cracked a rib. I was taking medications for pain and cough but I was very ill and very weak. I am lucky to have a devoted husband who has put in incredible energy to give me the support I needed – looking after me at home, carrying more than his share of work both at home and in our business, and driving me to all those appointments. I don’t know how I could have coped without him. I also have a close corps of family and friends who cheered me up over email and Skype, and took care of things I couldn't take care of. I had to learn to let people look after me, which was a very difficult lesson. I haven't mastered it, but I've made some progress.

Then the treatment started to work. The way this shows up is in the form of pain. The immune system starts to attack and clean up the tumours. This is a good thing, but it involves swelling and increased blood flow to the area and such, which manifests as pain. A lot of pain. But it was weird, because we all knew this was probably a really good sign and reason to be optimistic and hopeful. Within three weeks of the first treatment, my symptoms began to improve. I had a setback with some hip pain that turned out to be caused by tumours in my hip and leg bones. It’s unusual for melanoma to spread to arms and legs, and more unusual than that to discover it from pain.  It is typically discovered when your leg bone collapses underneath you and you need emergency surgery with plates and pins and things. They were worried I would break my leg, so I got radiation treatment for a week to give those tumours specifically a hard knock back. The radiation techs asked every day “you have pain meds, right? You have enough? You need a refill?” and within a few days I found out why. The pain when the radiation starts to blast the tumour apart, and the immune system comes sweeping in to clean it up, is, well, memorable. And I know precisely how long it takes my opioids to start working from when I take them, as a result.

Another diversion, this one on metaphors and visualizations. I reject the war/fight/battle approach to diseases and to cancer. My leisure time involves a lot of outdoor activity – bike rides, wilderness canoe camping, hiking, that sort of thing. When you’re trying to ride your bike up a long, steep hill, you are not in a fight with the hill. You are not battling the hill. It’s simple: the hill doesn’t even know you are there. The hill doesn’t care. The hill isn’t steep at you, for you, because of you. It just is. When you’re paddling a canoe into the wind, the wind isn’t blowing in some sort of spiteful attempt to keep you from that amazing beach campsite. The wind doesn’t know you’re there, the lake doesn’t know you’re there. You can “win” or “lose” – get to the top of the hill, make it to the campsite, give up and turn around because there isn’t time to do it now – but the hill or the lake doesn’t win or lose, or even engage in this alleged battle in any way. Things can be very difficult without being a fight, a battle, or a war. In the same way, cancer isn’t a side in a fight. My tumours aren’t trying to kill me. They aren’t co-ordinating with other people’s tumours. There is no communication or plotting between elements of my disease and elements of someone else’s disease. Neither cancer in general nor my tumours in particular will feel some sort of sting or loss when I “win” and they won’t exult if I “lose”. They aren’t battling me, and it doesn’t really make sense for me to battle them.I can’t kick cancer’s ass because cancer is heartless, mindless, assless. My metaphor is more about cleaning up. Something is wrong in my body – things are growing where they shouldn’t, and this can be very dangerous, don’t get me wrong. Growths that squeeze vital organs keep them from working. Growths that eat a hole in my leg bone can result in the bone crumbling and collapsing underneath me. This needs to be fixed. This needs to be cleaned up. My immune system can do that, but it needs some help, and the medication is providing that help. I can imagine the lumps and growths being taken apart and tidied up by white blood cells and other immune components of my body. When I feel the pain of a flare that indicates a response is happening, I focus on imagining that process in action right where I’m feeling the pain. I take care of myself, push myself hard when I need to, ask the right questions, report the right details to those who need them, and do the work of getting better. It is hard, really hard, and I do contribute to my recovery, as well as being a very lucky person.

By December I really could tell I had turned a corner. I wrote in a family email update:

My third treatment is in the books and the fourth is scheduled for the Thursday before Christmas. My first scan since the treatment began will be in early January, and then I guess I will have an appointment where someone will tell me what they see on the scan. My expectation is that they will see dramatic shrinkage if not outright disappearance of all the growths and lumps I was told about through the fall, putting me in the 80% of study members who “respond” to the treatment. From my point of view, I ask “where is my cough?” – totally gone. “Where is the belly pain at the bottom of my ribcage?” – totally gone and they can poke my stomach in an exam and it just feels utterly normal like before I was sick. “Where is my fatigue?” – gone. I am not napping. I am out of bed every day and out of the house if I need to be. I can go shopping. Heck, yesterday I went to Costco. That’s right, Costco in December. That probably tells you all you need to know about my energy levels.

We then had Christmas and New Years and I had a scan and met with my doctor – the grin on his face as he came into the room told us all we needed to know. He actually took us out of the exam room to see my before and after scans on a monitor. As I wrote to family, quoting him:

“Here in the lungs, this and this and this, these are tumours. These are blood vessels don’t worry about those. That is a rib. Now over here see? The tumours are gone. Here there was a big blob of something, that’s gone. Now down here to the liver, see how swollen it was? On this side you can see it’s back to normal size. And tumour here and here, over here now you just see a small shadow in that place, probably a hole left behind when the tumour was gone.” And so on.

We came up with a plan to wean off the pair of pain medications I was using, which worked, and other than Tylenol for a headache occasionally, I am taking no pain medications at all. The radiologist opinion, which came later, is a little more conservative, but uses the word “disappeared” fairly often, along with “marked improvement” and “healing”. Overall, the reports show a very good response. Alas, the “whole body” cat scan didn’t include my hip, so I don’t know how things are going there. But my overall colour and energy makes it clear that I have had an amazing response. They don’t see anything new. Everything they used to see is going or gone.

The only question remaining is how long to keep treating me for.  We have switched, as scheduled, from Ipilimumab and Nivolumab every 3 weeks to just Nivolumab every 4 weeks. I have had one and will get at least one more treatment, then depending on the results of the scans after those, they might stop or keep going to 4 treatments or as many as 13. They really aren’t sure how long to treat people for. Some people are better forever after just one treatment – these are folks with terrible side effects who can’t have a second treatment. At first they kept treating people who could tolerate the meds indefinitely, then they decided two years was sensible, then one year, now … well, we’ll take it as it goes.

I’m still essentially side-effect free. I’ve lost a lot of weight: 25 pounds or more since the surgery, most of it in a single unpleasant month, and I had slowly and deliberately lost 35 pounds over a few years before that. I am already starting to regain some of my muscle, lost during all the bedrest. I am sleeping well too, having finally shaken the effects of a lingering “Christmas cold.” (It might have been the flu – there was an outbreak, and I couldn’t have a flu shot this year because of the immunotherapy.) I am cleared to drive again, since I’m off all my pain meds now, and I can have a glass of wine from time to time should the mood strike me. My thyroid levels were low, so I’ve started thyroid meds. They’ve come back to normal on the meds, and I don’t know if that will end up a life-long thing or not. It’s a pretty minor effect overall – plenty of women my age take thyroid meds every day. Low thyroid levels cause fatigue and cold sensitivity, both of which I had in early January, and which seem to have improved since I started the thyroid meds. I had been losing hair, not at the levels you see for people on chemo, but noticeable, and since I started the thyroid meds, that has gone back to normal too. I have enough energy that I could travel to Waterloo for a C++ Meetup in February, my first "public appearance" in perhaps a year.

So that is where I am. My tumours are dramatically shrunken or gone, and may never come back. Bone is growing back where tumours ate it. My symptoms are gone. I don’t know how much longer I will be treated for, or whether more side effects will still arise, but I can start to build my way back towards a more normal life. I got better. I was told I had incurable cancer, Wikipedia told me less than 10% survive it even for 5 years, I could expect to live for just months, and now, less than 6 months after being told that, I’m better. It’s weird. Wonderful, but weird. This is like being around when insulin was first being used, or antibiotics. It changes everything. I should probably have been dead by now and instead I feel the way I did before I knew I was sick, or perhaps even a little bit better.

I decided to share all of this detail for a few reasons.

• People are curious – I get emails asking if I’m ok, how am I doing, sending me good vibes and such from folks who really don’t know what’s happening but know something is. I would like all of them to know I’m ok now, even though I still can’t travel.
• People are unaware how much things are changing in the world of cancer treatment and research. I still shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t ended up referred to the particular doctor I ended up with, and had instead only been offered the old (useless) treatment. I like sharing the success story so that other people will know about it.
• It’s a very happy story and everyone who knows the details is really happy to know them, so why not share that more widely?

I will still be less active than usual for a while, but I am working my way back to being my old self.

Kate

I had to curtail my activities pretty dramatically in the second half of 2016, even in areas like mailing list participation or answering questions on StackOverflow. I was beginning to wonder if I would qualify for Visual C++ MVP again without conference talks or some of my other usual activities. No-one should ever assume they will be awarded; the program is always changing and our lives are always changing, so anyone can find themselves out of sync with the requirements of a program. However, I'm happy to learn that I have been renewed for 2017 and will continue to be part of this active community.

Looking forward to a terrific 2017,

Kate

Our longest-serving employee, Joyce MacDonald, has worked her last day with us. She’s moving away to the other side of the country, where I don’t doubt another firm will soon find themselves blessed with her skills. Joyce joined us full time 16 years (and one month) ago, and had been working part time for us long before that. From the very beginning, every task that she took on she transformed and improved. We needed data entry when we were building a website for a local real estate firm; she took the procedure for adding a listing and kept streamlining it – open these three files at once, copy this once, then paste it here, here, and here – until she had cut the target time in half and then in half again. Later, she helped to develop our Quality Procedures and to bring order to chaos in our software development process as we moved to agile and changed our client mix. She helped our developers to become more organized, to report progress more thoroughly, and to test before committing or deploying. She trained our clients to think about what they really needed and to consider the consequences of what they were asking for. I have never met anyone who cared as much about the success of the firm as Joyce. We’ve employed dozens of people who’ve done good work, worked hard, and cared about our clients. The majority of them, like the majority of people everywhere, never gave much thought to whether the company was doing well, except perhaps to wonder or worry if their job was safe, or if there would be money to spend on perks. I’m not complaining; I think that’s perfectly normal. Joyce is wired differently: it’s fundamentally important to her that things are done right, that the client gets what they want, and that the company makes a profit. That’s what just has to happen, and it’s generally what she’s able to make happen.

Joyce started doing data entry and office administration but quickly moved into more complicated tasks. She’s been managing projects and client interactions for a long time. She also made sure that people did what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it, and kept everyone informed and contented. If you’ve ever called our office, you’ve probably talked to her. She’s probably reassured you about something and made sure it got taken care of for you. She has her PMP now, which formally recognizes how well she manages projects, gets requirements out of customers and organized in a way we can all understand, and builds appropriate processes for developers to follow. She’s taken on the challenge of managing not just seasoned, well-behaved, adult developers, but also students and our own grown children, who are not always easy to control. Let’s just say they meet their deadlines for her :-).

Losing Joyce to the west coast hasn’t been a total surprise for us. When we came back from the epic Pacific trip, she got the opportunity to move and though she delayed it, we rather knew it was inevitable. Over the past 6 months or so we’ve adjusted the balance of work we take on so that our remaining clients will be those I can handle client support for, and whose projects I can manage. (Brian will continue to be an architect, developer, and star debugger who doesn’t have to talk to the clients.) For our clients, nothing much will change. For us, there will be a hole in our lives – personally and professionally – that will take a while to settle down. When she joined us, Joyce was a neighbor (I believe we first met in the summer of 92), and for a long time she walked or rode her bike to work in the office attached to our house. Our kids have grown up together. When stuff happens, Joyce is the one we talk it through with – business and not-business. We were able to go to the other side of the world for five weeks, often with no internet, knowing the company would tick along fine without us. It’s going to be an adjustment not having her with us every day, not having her to count on. Still, we know why she’s moving, and we wish her all the best in this new phase of her life.

Kate

PS: If you’ve found this entry as part of due diligence in a hiring process, let me be clear: Hire Her. You won’t regret it.

The first keynote at CppCon this year was Bjarne Stroustrup (who invented the C++ language) announcing the C++ Core Guidelines. They are on Github and once he announced them, as Herb Sutter reported in the second keynote the very next day, they quickly became a trending topic across all languages. Here is a description of the guidelines from there:

The C++ Core Guidelines are a collaborative effort led by Bjarne Stroustrup, much like the C++ language itself. They are the result of many person-years of discussion and design across a number of organizations. Their design encourages general applicability and broad adoption but they can be freely copied and modified to meet your organization's needs.

The aim of the guidelines is to help people to use modern C++ effectively. By "modern C++" we mean C++11 and C++14 (and soon C++17). In other words, what would you like your code to look like in 5 years' time, given that you can start now? In 10 years' time?

The guidelines are focused on relatively higher-level issues, such as interfaces, resource management, memory management, and concurrency. Such rules affect application architecture and library design. Following the rules will lead to code that is statically type safe, has no resource leaks, and catches many more programming logic errors than is common in code today. And it will run fast - you can afford to do things right.

To me, these guidelines are the key to getting across my fundamental message that C++ does not have to be hard, scary, complicated, or dangerous. The language may still say “it’s your foot!” but the guidelines, and the tools they can drive, are quite the opposite.

You probably know that Visual Studio has a static analyser built in. (You should, anyway, I’ve blogged about it.) It will catch things like this:

    int* p = nullptr;
    *p = 10;   

But it doesn’t mind things like this:

    int arr[10];        
    int* p2 = arr;

Two lines, two violations of the guidelines – I’m not initializing any of the elements of arr, and then I am using its address as a regular old pointer. Now, there’s nothing wrong with regular old pointers – some people have got quite a hate on for them with the rise of genuinely smart pointers, but pointers are fine. Using pointers to control lifetime isn’t fine, because it’s impossibly difficult. But pointers themselves are fine. What’s not fine here is the “decay” of an array into a pointer – folks from other languages don’t expect that at all, and some marvelous bugs have hidden behind this simple bit of helpfulness from the compiler. So there’s a guideline that says don’t do that. Specifically:

(I’m giving you a picture of code because if you want to copy and paste you should go to the live, always updated, guidelines on github.)

This guideline is part of a “profile” – a particular set of rules that are designed to be enforced and that are supported by tools. Well, when I say tools I might be overstating the case a little. There’s just one tool at the moment, but that could be enough!

This tool, C++ Core Checker, is on the NuGet Gallery. You don’t have to get it from there though. You get it, and use it, from inside Visual Studio 2015. Any version will do. If you don’t use Visual Studio normally, just get and install the Community Edition, which is free and is ok to use for commercial purposes, from https://www.visualstudio.com/ . (Need the fine print? if you’re using it as a person, you can do whatever you like. If you work for a company with less than 250 PCs and less than a million dollars US in revenue, again you and up to 4 of your coworkers can use it for whatever you like. If you work for an “enterprise” company then any and all of the employees can still use it for learning purposes or to work on open source.) Note that Visual C++ isn’t part of the Typical install, so you’ll need to choose Custom and select Visual C++:

So once you have Community Edition or some edition of Visual Studio, make a console application and put in the two bad lines of code. Build it and then also run static analysis on it (On the Analyze menu, choose Run Code Analysis, On Solution.) You won’t get any warnings or errors. That’s your pre-guidelines life. You’re doing something inappropriate and nobody is telling you.

Now, add the checker to your solution. This is solution-by-solution, not a change to how Visual Studio does static analysis. On the Tools menu, choose NuGet Package Manager, Package Manager Console. In the console window that appears, type Install-Package Microsoft.CppCoreCheck and press enter. You will see output like this:

Attempting to gather dependencies information for package 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck.14.0.23107.2' with respect to project 'ConsoleApplication1', targeting 'native,Version=v0.0'
Attempting to resolve dependencies for package 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck.14.0.23107.2' with DependencyBehavior 'Lowest'
Resolving actions to install package 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck.14.0.23107.2'
Resolved actions to install package 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck.14.0.23107.2'
Adding package 'Microsoft.Gsl.0.0.1' to folder 'c:\users\kate\documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\ConsoleApplication1\packages'
Added package 'Microsoft.Gsl.0.0.1' to folder 'c:\users\kate\documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\ConsoleApplication1\packages'
Added package 'Microsoft.Gsl.0.0.1' to 'packages.config'
Successfully installed 'Microsoft.Gsl 0.0.1' to ConsoleApplication1
Adding package 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck.14.0.23107.2' to folder 'c:\users\kate\documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\ConsoleApplication1\packages'
Added package 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck.14.0.23107.2' to folder 'c:\users\kate\documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\ConsoleApplication1\packages'
Added package 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck.14.0.23107.2' to 'packages.config'
Successfully installed 'Microsoft.CppCoreCheck 14.0.23107.2' to ConsoleApplication1
PM>

This changes your project settings so that analysis runs this Core Checker for you. Repeat the analysis step and this time the new tool will run and you will get output like this:
------ Rebuild All started: Project: ConsoleApplication1, Configuration: Debug Win32 ------
  stdafx.cpp
  ConsoleApplication1.cpp
  ConsoleApplication1.vcxproj -> c:\users\kate\documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\ConsoleApplication1\Debug\ConsoleApplication1.exe
c:\users\kate\documents\visual studio 2015\projects\consoleapplication1\consoleapplication1\consoleapplication1.cpp(9): warning C26494: Variable 'arr' is uninitialized. Always initialize an object. (type.5: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=620421)
c:\users\kate\documents\visual studio 2015\projects\consoleapplication1\consoleapplication1\consoleapplication1.cpp(10): warning C26485: Expression 'arr': No array to pointer decay. (bounds.3: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=620415)
========== Rebuild All: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

Where it says "type.5" and there's a link, that's to the specific rule in the "type" profile that this code breaks. And where it says "bounds.3", the same - I showed a picture of bounds.3 up above.

Isn’t that great? Come on, it’s great! The tool will add more rules as we move through 2016. I’m going to have a lot more to say about the Guidelines as well. But this is a great place to start.Why not point it at some of your own code and see what happens?

Kate

I have a new Pluralsight course on Visual Studio called Visual Studio 2015: Essentials to the Power-User. It starts at the beginning, so if you're new to Visual Studio it will help you get started, but carries on "to 11" as it were, covering things many everyday users of Visual Studio don't know. Here are the modules, each with their length:

1. Getting Started (42:08)
2. Projects and Solutions (13:23)
3. Namespaces, Folders, and Files(27:03)
4. Understanding and Personalizing Visual Studio UI Components (26:57)
5. Exploring Relationships in Your Code(36:41)
6. Using Search and Find Effectively(28:15)
7. Letting Visual Studio Help You (46:28)
8. Basic Debugging Features (24:04)
9. Additional Debugging Features (44:30)
10. Working with Designers (39:37)
11. Useful Extensions (39:54)
12. IntelliTrace and Code Map (25:57)

If you don't have a Pluralsight subscription, click the Author link over on the right hand side of this blog - click Subscribe, then Start 10-Day trial. That should give you a good idea of how valuable the subscriptions can be. (My company buys subscriptions for my staff, and I use my free author one all the time. It's a great way to learn a new technology.)

My main goal in this course was to have Visual Studio make sense to the learner. There are so many ways to do any action that sometimes when you learn something it seems pointless, and you quickly get tired of learning an endless parade of similar features. I worked hard to put these into an order that would lead naturally through the capabilities of the tool, and put things in context. If you watch all 12 modules, you'll know more Visual Studio than most developers - and you'll have a productivity boost to show for it that should be pretty impressive! Please do give it a try.

Kate

On the Pluralsight platform, subscribers can access a discussion area for each course. The traffic in mine is light enough that I have set up an alert to send me an email for each new comment. I just got one for my StackExchange course that brought a huge smile to my face:

I have actually tried not to use Stack Exchange and stick to other sites.  I had several bad experiences and have not gained any reputation at all on any questions that I asked.  I have even deleted questions due to downvotes or other negative activity.  Well after watching this, I understand the problems that I have had in the past.  I really enjoyed hearing this and knowing the mechanics of how this works [...] I now know more about it to help me find the answers that I need when I am head scratching my way through coding.

When I first started reading I was thinking "here's a comment about how StackExchange is horrible and why have a course on it" - something I hear from some of my friends. But then it took a sharp right turn to the exact reason why I wrote the course. I mean this is exactly the persona I had in mind - someone who needs answers, but because of not knowing the way the sites work, not only isn't getting them, but is having an unpleasant experience and ends up avoiding the sites.

When I decide to write a course I let myself imagine some possible outcomes. This comment is just the sort of outcome I was hoping for. It keeps me motivated to create more :-)

Kate

First, have a schedule. Weeks before the conference, mark out what talks you want to attend. Have a goal of selecting two talks in most time slots. Then if your first choice is not as good as you expected, or the room is full and you don’t want to stand, you know exactly where to go for your second choice. Have that schedule in your pocket – on your phone, or on a piece of paper – so you have no lost time figuring out where to go. (CppCon uses Sched, which mails you each day's schedule in the morning, making it easy to have with you.) Don’t be the person who shows up at 9 only to learn there were sessions at 8. Check the schedule at least once a day during the conference in case things are being added. Tip: things are being added, you can count on it.

Second, plan ahead to take care of the physical body that is carrying your brain from session to session. It’s really a simple matter to have a few granola bars and a bottle of water in your bag. If you miss a snack, you can still have something to eat or drink. Bring a light sweater in case you are in the cold room. Bring some painkillers if you might get a headache from sitting somewhere loud. Bring whatever little comforts you need to keep yourself from getting whiny and leaving early to go to your peaceful hotel room and watch TV. (That said, there’s always one day in a one-week conference where I go back to my room for an afternoon nap. It’s the only way I can stay functional during long and intellectually-intense days. Just make sure you’re doing it for a brain recharge and not for something you could have avoided by bringing a small item with you to the conference centre.)

Third, think about how you’re going to take notes. A paper notebook? Bring a spare pen, too. Your phone? Your laptop? Or are you just going to immerse yourself in the experience and use the videos if you want to check something later? Whatever your plan is, bring what you need to be able to use it. Power is always a challenge at conferences – I like to bring an external battery for my phone so it can charge in my bag. Think about what your bag is going to weigh and consider leaving the laptop at the hotel and getting by with a phone and some paper for notes. It’s really liberating not to be lugging a heavy bag, in fact surprisingly so.

Fourth, before you arrive (at the latest, on the plane to the conference) write up your goals for the conference. Do you want to meet people? Specific people, or some number of people, or people from a particular industry? Do you want to learn something specific? (Perhaps this is the year to understand SFINAE, or be able to follow along in a talk that includes template meta programming, or “get” those Haskell jokes people are always telling.)  Maybe you want to tell people about something? Tweet some number of times? Blog some number of times?  Have a plan. Have goals. Check yourself against these goals each morning, and adjust your plan for the day if you need to, so that you move towards those goals each day.

When you arrive at the conference, scout out the amenities. Where are the bathrooms? Are there tables and chairs? Are there tables and chairs with power? On Day 1, pay close attention to the food and drink pattern. Is coffee always available, or only at certain times? Where does the food appear? Knowing this will take away any worry you may be carrying around that you may miss something and not get another chance at it. It will also save you from taking extras of things and lugging them around all day when you don’t really need them. I also like to work out patterns related to what rooms I’ll be in – that I’ll be on the same floor all afternoon, for example. It just makes me feel a little more settled and centred.

Looking after your body doesn’t stop with what you planned and what you brought. I start each day with 5 minutes of stretching which makes a big difference to how I feel all day. I also try to use the stairs instead of the escalators – less lining up and it makes me feel better too. I go ahead and eat the snacks, many of which are not part of my normal day (brownies in the afternoon? bag of chips at lunch?) but not to excess. CppCon has fruit and other options that are not all about fat, sugar, and caffeine, and it’s often a smart choice to go with those rather than the straight-up treats. Try not to get too far from normal. If you normally have 5 cups of coffee a day, then you can do that during the conference, but if you’re a one-cup-a-day person, perhaps don’t go beyond 2 or 3 a day while you’re here. Same advice for alcohol – if you dramatically increase your consumption over the course of the week, you’re likely to feel uncomfortable by the time Thursday or Friday rolls around. The one thing you should be sure to take in more of than usual is water – whether you’re eating more sugar than usual, drinking more caffeine and alcohol than usual, or just walking a lot more than usual from room to room in a conference centre, extra water is what you need to compensate. If you grab a bottle of water at a snack break, hang on to it when it’s empty – typically most conference rooms have a watercooler or bubbler by the door where you can refill that bottle whenever you want. Can’t stand water? Bring something to flavour it with – pick up some powders or drops at home and try them out to see which one you like. It’s way more efficient than hanging around hoping that this is the break they have juice at, or leaving the conference centre on a half hour walk for a convenience store.

As the conference goes on, be aware of how you are spending your time. For example, if you check your email during a session, but then take a peek at Twitter, and then at your personal Facebook – are you even really in the session anymore? Don’t be afraid to leave if this is not the session for you. You can go to another one, or talk to other attendees out in the hall, or go back to the hotel for a one hour nap. Almost anything is better than ignoring a speaker and killing time on your laptop or phone. And if you’re not prepared to leave, then perhaps you just need to start paying more attention to the session – assuming it’s material you actually are interested in. Take a look at those goals you wrote. Have you tweeted recently? Blogged? Learned that thing? Met enough people? Will staying in this session and listening meet your goals, or should you go out to the hall and work on a goal? Are you just chatting with your own coworkers, or someone you’ve known for years? Building and strengthening relationships is great, of course. That doesn’t mean that discussing the football game with your cubicle-mate is a good use of your time at a place you flew 5 hours to attend. Maybe you can walk around and find a way to join a conversation with a speaker or someone else you wouldn’t normally meet. Just standing there listening can be very enlightening even if you don’t end up saying much.

If you’re not normally a tweeter, blogger, or talker-to-strangers, a conference is a great place to start. There are immediate benefits. Perhaps your question will be answered, or your point will be repeated and quoted, or you’ll make a new friend or business connection. This will give you reinforcement for doing that, of course. As you meet your goals, make a record of that, so you can easily answer questions about what you learned or accomplished during the conference. Consider writing a summary when you’re done – for yourself, or for whoever funded the trip. A chronological structure is natural – Monday morning I went to a talk called X and learned Y or met Z, at lunch Monday I talked to A and B who encouraged me to look into C, Monday afternoon I went to a talk on C – but be sure to have an executive summary that reads a little less like a diary. Start writing it during the conference and polish it on the trip home. Once you get back to the office, writing that summary is going to get harder and harder, so don’t put it off.

Attending conferences is a great way to boost your career – when you do it well you learn a lot in a short time, meet luminaries of your industry and people just like you, raise your profile and your confidence, and have a wonderful time. When you do it poorly, you get tired, hungover, lonely, overwhelmed, and bored. Put in the effort to plan and prepare, and you will be in a great position to reap the rewards.

One of the CppCon sponsors, Bloomberg, is running a contest for students in university or college and giving away trips to attend CppCon2015 in September in Bellevue, Washington:

The series of seven weekly challenges will kick off on June 22, 2015, and each week contestants will be provided a different set of problems to solve via Bloomberg’s cloud-based CodeCon platform. Each week’s winner will earn a trip to CppCon in September. The list of seven winners will be announced and notified via email on August 5.

Interested? You should be. CppCon is a great experience for students and one you won't soon forget.

Kate

My friend (and fellow Pluralsight author) Kathleen Dollard is coming to town, and will speak at the East of Toronto .NET User Group on "What's New in C# 6.0".

The next release of Visual Studio includes some major language enhancements that every developer should be aware of. Get up to speed on forthcoming enhancements quickly with this user group meeting from Microsoft MVP and language guru Kathleen Dollard.

Join us at 6pm at the Pickering Central Library! Please register at the Meetup page. See you there!

Kate

In my Pluralsight course, Using StackOverflow and Other StackExchange Sites, I cover all the things you really need to know to use the sites effectively and get answers to your questions, or a chance to show your skills. In the last module I explain how to help run the sites yourself, and I suppose you don't actually need to know that to use them - but knowing how they're run can help you understand what happens and why, so I included that material. I didn't include things that are really just for fun.

Right now, Winter Bash is on and it's just for fun. I made a quick video to show what it's about - take a look and let me know what you think. I hope to keep adding more "almost-great" items throughout next year.

Kate

Kate Gregory is a C++ expert who has been using C++ since before Microsoft had a C++ compiler, an early adopter of many software technologies and tools, and a well-connected member of the software development community. She has over three decades of software development experience in a variety of programming languages including Fortran, PL/I, C++, Java, Visual Basic, and C#.  Her recent programming work is almost exclusively in native C++ and C#, on a variety of projects, for both Enterprise and ISV clients. Since January 2002 she has been Microsoft Regional Director for Toronto and since January 2004 she has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional designation for Visual C++. In June 2005 she won the Regional Director of the year award, and she was one of the C++ MVPs of the year for 2010. She maintains strong relationships with the C++, Visual Studio, and Windows teams in Redmond.

Kate is the author of over a dozen books, mostly on C++ programming: the latest, on massively parallel programming with C++ AMP, was published in fall 2012 by Microsoft Press. She teaches .NET, Visual Studio, and C++ (including online courses for Pluralsight) and is in demand as an expert speaker, with numerous cross-Canada tours for Microsoft Canada, and sessions at DevDays, DevTeach, TechEd (USA, Europe, Africa) and DevIntersection, among others. In 2014 she was Open Content Chair for CppCon, the largest C++ conference ever held, where she also delivered sessions. Kate is the founder of the East of Toronto .NET Users group and a member of adjunct faculty at Trent University in Peterborough. Her firm, Gregory Consulting Limited, is based in rural Ontario and helps clients adopt new technologies and adjust to the changing business environment. Current work makes heavy use of .NET and Visual C++ for both web and client development, especially for Windows 7 and 8. Managing, mentoring, technical writing, and technical speaking occupy much of her time, but she still writes code every week.

Kate Gregory has been using C++ since before Microsoft had a C++ compiler, and has been paid to program since 1979. She loves C++ and believes that software should make our lives easier. That includes making the lives of developers easier! She'll stay up late arguing about deterministic destruction or how C++ 11 is not the C++ you remember.

Kate runs a small consulting firm in rural Ontario and provides mentoring and management consultant services, as well as writing code every week. She has spoken all over the world, written over a dozen books, and helped thousands of developers to be better at what they do. Kate is a Microsoft Regional Director, and a Visual C++ MVP, an Imagine Cup judge and mentor, and an active contributor to StackOverflow and other StackExchange sites. She develops courses for Pluralsight, primarily on C++ and Visual Studio. In 2014 she was Open Content Chair for CppCon, the largest C++ conference ever held, where she also delivered sessions.

Earlier this year I flew to Utah for the Pluralsight Author Summit. Spending time with such a great collection of my friends and colleagues, and learning more about how to make a great course, was the real reason for the trip, but I got up early one morning to record a Play by Play video with Geoffrey Grosenbach. He has a genuine skill of getting you to demonstrate your own thought processes aloud and I've enjoyed watching other people's Play by Play sessions a lot.

Geoffrey had arranged for some ancient C++ code for me to poke around in. Mike Woodring came through with the sample code from his 1997 book with Aaron Cohen, WIN32 Multithreaded Programming. Seventeen-year old code it may have been, but it turned out not to be quite as ugly as I would have liked. Still, we put it through its paces a little and talked about how I approach this sort of task.

It came out to about 90 minutes overall so if you have a chance to watch it, let me know what you thought!

Kate