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

Day 2 at CppNorth started with Lightning Talks! But first I had to walk to the venue. When I drive around, I'm used to a flagger making cars stop from time to time to let a construction vehicle proceed. But this was my first sidewalk flagger:

The lightning talks were terrific, as they so often are. Funny, helpful, educational, often all 3. Pier-Antoine Giguère was our high-energy MC and really shone. I don't have any pictures because I was paying attention to all the talks!

Then it was Chandler Carruth, one of my fellow Carbon leads, with How Designing Carbon with C++ Interop Taught Me About C++ Variadics and Overloads, a talk I definitely enjoyed. There was plenty of code in both languages.

The audience seemed to enjoy it, too. After lunch I went to Hiding your Implementation Details is Not So Simple by Amir Kirsh, who has a gentle teaching style I really like. Then it was Mitigating the Intellectual Anxiety Associated with Learning the C++ Programming Language by Emmanuel Danso Nyarko from CppAfrica. If you've ever worried about C++'s reputation for being "the language for smart people" this talk will show you just how real it is. The reality of what jobs are available in Africa controls what languages people will learn. With no high-paying fintech or envy-of-your-friends gamedev employers, why would someone take on something they think is incredibly difficult?

This also applies to what is in the standard library. Seasoned C++ developers with lots of community folks to talk to can figure out how to build a UI. Different projects will make different choices - use Qt or some similar C++ framework, put a not-C++ frontend on a C++ engine, or some of the other choices of various age and success. But how does someone without that community navigate those choices and get started? Why doesn't the standard library help with that in any way at all other than "console apps" with keyboard input and text output?

Then I went to see Sohaila Ali, a very poised 17 year old with years of experience in hackathons and other contests and conferences, talk about career from that youth perspective. The audience was very engaged and the conversation after the talk was lively and enlightening.

Alas, as that talk wrapped up I had to do as I mentioned in my keynote and accept my own limitations. After a very full day of interesting talks I needed to cut the input for a while so I did not see Eric Wastl's keynote. I look forward to the recording, because I heard it was good.

One more day to go!

Kate

Things are really starting to happen on the Carbon project. Since Chandler Carruth announced the project two years ago at CppNorth, progress on the language design, and the toolchain implementation, has been considerable. Until very recently, if you wanted to try your hand at writing a little "hello world" application, you literally had to clone or fork the repo, and then build all the toolchain and tests, and you had to install a lot of dependencies in order to do that.

Now, there are nightly releases of a tool that can compile and link Carbon code. The only dependency I needed (on a WSL Ubuntu fresh install) was clang-16. I got that like this:

wget https://apt.llvm.org/llvm.sh

chmod u+x llvm.sh

sudo ./llvm.sh 16

sudo apt install \

  clang-16 \

  libc++-16-dev  \

  libc++abi-16-dev \

  lld-16

Then I downloaded a nightly build, untar-ed it, and could compile and link Carbon code, within the limitations of what has been implemented so far.

If you haven't been paying attention, you might want to watch some conference talks. Or check out the Carbon Copy newsletter. You'll find the 3 issues that have been published in the announcements section of the repo. Issue Number 3 is the latest and includes sample code that runs the Sieve of Eratosthenes to count the number of primes under 1000. (You can edit it to try a different limit, if you like.) This shows off user defined types (with a factory function), while loops, if, and a number of other parts of the language. 

Of course, Carbon is nowhere near ready to use. The only UI it can do is to print an integer. No other types, and it can't read input. There are no strings. There's no C++ interop. A number of language features (generics, variadics, lambdas and so on) are not implemented. It is nearly ready to evaluate. If you can't wait to start evaluating, you don't have to. Just be aware you can't evaluate all of it yet. But you can start, if you would like to.

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

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

From time to time I think it's wise to summarize the courses I have on Pluralsight. There is a link on the side you can use to get a free trial if you want to take any of these. Because I redo most of the courses each time a new version of C++ becomes widespread, there are quite a few courses with similar names. Here's a quick summary.

If you are using the latest version of a major compiler, you are on C++20. These courses have been updated for C++20:

• C++ 20: The Big Picture This is an overview covering "what is C++?" and "what is it used for?". If someone has suggested you learn it, start here to understand why you might want to. The title means that it's up to date to C++20, not that it only covers C++20. The actual content is equally applicable to older versions of the language.
  
• C++20 Fundamentals is more properly "the fundamentals of C++ including things that were introduced in C++20". This is an introduction to the ideas, syntax, and standard library. At seven and a half hours it can't cover absolutely every corner of the language, but it does cover what you need to call yourself a C++ programmer, and get started writing real code. This course assumes you already know how to program. If you don't, try Learn to Program with C++ 17 which will cover the building blocks of programming languages like loops, functions, and objects while teaching the C++ syntax and library. Afterwards, you can take Fundamentals to fill in any gaps.
  
• C++20 Algorithms Playbook again covers up to and including C++20, so plenty of things that have been around for decades, but it does have a lot of content that is C++20 only, because ranges made such a big difference here. If you're not on C++20 yet, take the C++17 version, listed below. Both versions are designed to convince you to stop writing raw loops and start using the many useful functions provided in the standard library. I demystify iterators and show you the benefits of using library code instead of rolling your own.

I've been working away for the last few months completely overhauling my C++ Fundamentals course at Pluralsight. Of course I updated everything for C++20, but I also added a module on error handling options, tweaked most demos, and lightened the overall look and feel. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Here's the table of contents:

Leaving pointers almost till the end may seem like a shock, but this is how I teach C++ these days and it really works well.

As always, if you need a trial code, look for the image in the sidebar here to get a free trial and give it a whirl! I had a great time writing and recording it and hope you enjoy watching it.

Kate

Maybe you hadn't heard? There's going to be a C++ conference in Toronto this summer. It's very exciting! I'm helping to arrange it. We've got a great venue (the King Edward) and are busy building a program right now that includes breakouts, workshops on concurrency, generic programming, and game development, plus entertainment in the evenings and plenty of special extras. I want to see Canadian C++ programmers well represented, and hope we attract people from further afield as well. Toronto in the summer is warm, fun, and light well into the evening.

Right now, the early bird price of $925 is in effect. After we announce the full program in April, the regular price will be $1250. So you can save a lot of money if you trust us to put together a great conference program for you (and we will!). You'll save enough to be able to pay for the speaker dinner, a conference Tshirt, and so on. And you'll let us know that we'll get the attendees we need to put on a great show.

Registering early helps us do things like make deposit payments to our vendors. We don't have a surplus-from-last-year, because this is our first year. So support from the community will really help. Why not check your schedule for the third full week of July (the conference is the 17th to 20th, and there are two-day workshops over the weekend of the 15th/16th) and arrange now to join us?

Kate

In April, I did my Naming is Hard talk at ACCU 2021. I'm getting better at doing talks online and handling interactions, at least I think I am :-). The recording is now online, so if you weren't at the conference, you can watch the talk. Being there is still better, even when it's digital - being able to chat to other attendees and the presenter is always going to be better than just watching a recording.

I added the talk to my youtube playlist of conference talks, so if you like that one and want some more, take a look!

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

At the start of the lockdown, Pluralsight made its huge curriculum free to help those who were suddenly needing new skills to find a new job during the pandemic. I saw a huge number of views of my C++ course for those who don't already know how to program. It was ironic, because I was busy updating that course, a process that is finally complete.

Please check it out on Pluralsight. The new course is called Learn to Program with C++. (The similar-but-not-the-same Learn How to Program with C++ is the old one.) Here's what I did to the 6+ year old course:

• redid all the demos in the latest compilers (Visual Studio Community Edition on Windows; Clang on Ubuntu and Mac)
  
• added more Ubuntu and Mac versions of demos and tested EVERYTHING on all the compilers
• moved content to slides and then just demonstrated it in the demo, instead of trying to explain concepts during long demos where there's no typing or other "demo" action
• took a more "modern C++" approach wherever I could
• improved the names in my sample code, trying not to have a,b,c and the like if I could
• added some explanation of "make" and removed rather a lot of "how to get Visual Studio to be nicer" because it does that itself now
  

Plus I just generally tweaked samples, slides, and demos throughout the whole course based on comments I've had from new learners since the original publication. It's a better course.

People often say that C++ cannot possibly be taught as a first language, but that's wrong. Modern C++ is not that hard. This course is a little over 5 hours long and covers most of the syntax and punctuation you need, functions, classes, type safety, using templates from the STL like vector and string, and even touches on const and RAII. If you want to learn C++ for whatever reason, don't let someone else tell you that you must go and learn some "scratch" or starter language first before coming back to what you really want to learn.

If you already know one programming language, and concepts like "if" or "loop" then you don't need this course. C++ Fundamentals Including C++ 17 is for you. It covers even more syntax, punctuation, library, and design aspects of the library.

As always, if you don't have a Pluralsight subscription, you can get a ten day trial by clicking the big white square on the blue sidebar of this blog. Enjoy!

Kate

I'm thrilled to announce my latest Pluralsight course:

Here are the modules:

• Course Overview
• Modern C++
• Standard Library Containers
• Lambdas
• Standard Library Algorithms
• Move Semantics
• Exceptions

• On Sunday, I am doing a preconference workshop (you can still get a spot) with John Lakos and Andrei Alexandrescu
• After the precon I hope to relax at the TShirt dinner. Pack a Tshirt that says C++ (or bring your badge, or a piece of paper on which you wrote C++ yourself) and choose a restaurant from the list that should be published by the time we all get to Colorado. When you arrive, ask where the other C++ Tshirt people are, and make some new friends! I'll be tweeting my plans just before I head out.
• Then it's back to the shiny new venue for the Registration Reception. Even if you're on East Coast time like me, make an appearance, see some friends or some of your heroes, there will probably be treats, and you'll be all set for the morning. Knowing the venue a bit is going to make you sleep better, and having your badge already will let you sleep longer.
• Monday I will be attending talks and spending time at the exhibitor table for #include<C++>, an organization working to make the C++ community more welcoming and inclusive. Come by and get a sticker! Buy a shirt! And you know, attending talks and hanging at the #include table is what I'll be doing all 5 days.
• If I manage to stay awake, I'll go to The Committee Fireside Chat after dinner. If there is something you always wanted to ask the people who create the C++ standard, here's where that happens.
  
• Tuesday and Wednesday it's talks, talks, talks! I predict I will go back to my room for a nap at least once. It's a strategic choice that lets you actually experience the post-nap talks instead of drowsing through them and needing to watch the recording in the end.
  
• Wednesday night is the #include<C++> dinner and panel! You can register for this on Eventbrite as part of registering for the conference. I'll moderate a discussion about some of what we've achieved in just two years, and what some of us would like to see next.
  
• Afterwards it's Lightning Talks. Everyone loves the Lightning Talks, they're always fantastic. I will try my best to stay up for them.
  
• If I can, I'll come super early on Thursday and Friday for recordings of CppChat. And stay all day for talks, of course.
  
• Thursday night is the Speaker's Dinner. And there's a planning meeting after that. But I might need an early night, because...
  
• Friday morning I have my one breakout session: Naming is Hard: Let's Do Better. And like last year, a lot of really good content is on Friday. Don't even think of leaving early. Fly home Saturday morning, you won't regret it.

See why I call CppCon an intense conference? 12 or 13 hours a day, every day. And no time for sightseeing! But oh my goodness the things I will learn, the people I will meet, and the fun I will have. See you there!

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

Usually, I start writing product-specific courses during the beta of a product, then record them after release. But this time around I am happy to announce my Visual Studio 2019 course is live on Pluralsight already, on launch day!

If you need a trial code, click over there where it says Click Start a FREE 10-Day trial (I didn't make the image so I'm not responsible for the missing "to" in the text.)

It's just over 2 hours long - less if you play it higher speed. I cover the basics to get you using it properly. Yes, a long and super detailed course is in the works, but you could probably take the Visual Studio 2017 Essentials and Beyond course and most of it will apply to 2019. Things that are new in 2019 I covered in the Getting Started course.

Kate

My latest Pluralsight course is live!

I start by talking about strategy - what parts to update, what general approach to take, and so on. Then I present a number of specific tactics, like using the preprocessor less and the compiler more, actually using C++ instead of just C, and using C++ features that were added in C++ 11, C++ 14, and C++ 17. I show you code examples for the changes I am suggesting, and explain why specific changes produce code that is more readable, understandable, and maintainable.

As always, if you don't already have a Pluralsight subscription, feel free to click the large white box in the margin and start a free trial. I hope you like the course, and tell your friends about it too!

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

I spent much of the spring working on this course, and am delighted to see it live!

Visual Studio 2017: Essentials to the Power User is 7 hours of good stuff you need if you're a Visual Studio user. My emphasis is on keeping you happy and productive by getting the tool to help you and showing you neat features you probably didn't know about. If you open that link in a new tab, you can play the course overview (a 2 minute "trailer") and look at the table of contents. I've done versions of this course for older Visual Studios and I get comments like "It's as though I have a whole new IDE" and "I've been using Visual Studio for years and you showed me things I didn't know, and I'm glad I do now."

I think debugging in general is not taught enough, so I'm happy to have 2 whole modules on it here - not on philosophy of debugging or how to narrow down a bug, but just on how to operate the machinery of Visual Studio's debugger. There's lots of it. Plus, if you have Ultimate, there's another half a module on "Historical Debugging", IntelliTrace. I also spend quite a lot of time on how to find your way around a large codebase with the various searching, finding, navigating and exploring capabilities that have evolved over time.

Here's a quick topic summary:

I really enjoyed writing this course and hope you enjoy watching it. If you need a free trial, look over to the right on this page for the grey rectangle that says Author and click for a 10 day trial.

Kate

I've started a C++ column in Visual Studio Magazine. I'm sure you've read plenty of C++ columns in your time - I sure have! I wanted this one to be a little different. So, here's what I've decided to do. For each column, I choose a guidelines from the C++ Core Guidelines, and then explain it. But the twist is that I'm not going through the guidelines from top to bottom - I'm picking guidelines whose explanations require a little language knowledge.

The first column just sets the stage and explains what I'm doing, and gives you a link to the Guidelines. The second, Don't Cast Away Const, explains the guideline, but also the consequences of const-correctness, a typical situation where you might find it hard to stay const-correct when you make a performance tweak to a running system, and the correct use of the mutable keyword. Not bad for explaining a four-word guideline!

I have a number of columns already written and plans to write more. Please check them out and spread the word!

Kate

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

If you have an MSDN subscription, you know that it provides a number of benefits besides software licenses - you get Azure hours, you can use Visual Studio Online, and so on. Those are well worth the price of the subscription. But it also gives you access to a number of Pluralsight courses, completely free. If you have a Professional Subscription, you get access to 30 courses, and if you have an Enterprise subscription, you get access to 45 courses.  (You want one of the over 4500 other courses? You'll need a full subscription, but you can buy that at 30% off, which helps.)

And yes, my latest course, Visual Studio 2015: Essentials to the Power-User is one of the ones you'll get access to. So go, check it out!

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

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

ACCU has announced the schedule for their 2015 conference in Bristol, so I can announce that it includes me!

James and I are adding quite a lot of material, so if you saw this talk at CppCon, you should probably come and see it again at ACCU. Alternatively, you could come to the conferences and watch one of the conflicting talks and take excellent notes, because I really wish I could be at those as well!

I first went to ACCU two years ago, spending my own money for travel and the registration fee. I enjoyed it immensely and learned a lot, so it's a real thrill to be speaking there this year. I can't wait!

Early bird rates last till the end of February. Register as soon as you can, and I'll see you there.

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

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

It's just around the corner - the largest C++ conference EVER with over one hundred talks!

And two of those talks I'll be doing with James McNellis. We had such a good time presenting together for Microsoft Virtual Academy that we decided to do it again. How do these sound?

Modernizing Legacy C++ Code

C++ is a programming language with a long, storied history spanning over three decades--four if one includes its C ancestry. The C++ language has undergone many changes during that time, compiler technology has advanced substantially, and computers today are very different from the computers of decades past. But despite all of these advances, there's an awful lot of C++ code in use today that looks like it was written in the 1980s. In some cases, the code was written in the 1980s and it's still in use; in other cases, it's recently-written code that just doesn't use modern style.

In this talk, we'll discuss some of the problems with legacy code, and review some practical techniques for applying principles of modern C++ to gradually improve the quality of legacy code and improve maintainability and debuggability. We'll show how some very small changes to code can yield huge benefits.

Making C++ Code Beautiful

Ask a non-C++ developer what they think of C++ and they'll give the language plenty of compliments: powerful, fast, flexible, and "the language for smart people". But along with that you are likely to hear ugly, complicated, hard to read, and "the language for smart people". Is it possible to write beautiful C++? Not arcanely elegant or wickedly compact, but readable, clear, expressive - beautiful! We say it is, and we want to show you how.

In this session, you'll see how to turn pages of "comic book characters swearing" into code you'll be proud to call your own. By making your code express your intent, using the power of new language and library functionality, and leaving hard-to-read constructs out of your vocabulary, you can give your code a makeover that will stand the test of time.

If you're not registered yet, there's still time! All five days cost $995 and there are one and two day passes available for less. You're going to want to meet and learn from the stars of C++ - check the full session list to read all about it.

Kate

My latest Pluralsight course, Introduction to Visual Studio 2013 - Part 2 is live and ready for action. The modules are:

• Basic Debugging
• Additional Debugging Features
• IntelliTrace
• Working With Designers
• Extensions

If you haven't watched Part 1, you really should.

What's my next course? I'm trying to decide that at the moment and will let you know when it's underway.

Kate

I've completed my development of my latest Pluralsight course and I'm just waiting for it to go live. Here are the "teaser" images  I posted to Twitter and my public Facebook page as I was developing it:

This was fun to put together and it's nice to get into things so many people don't know. I hope you take a look at it once it's live and learn from it!

Kate

Do you think Agile and Enterprise can go together? Are you a senior .NET developer who is looking to lead? If so, a client of mine is looking for you. Their job description includes:

We’ll look to you as a team leader who embraces a solid leadership capacity that has truly valuable impact on our team. In this senior role, you will participate in all aspects of the software development lifecycle including planning, technical design and architecture, construction, documentation, testing and deployment. Additionally, you’ll have a big picture view and the opportunity to play a role in the design.

and they're expecting:

• Proven and deep experience with different versions of .NET Framework and C#/ASP.NET development
• Demonstrable experience working on N-tier architectures
• Solid understanding of the full development life-cycle
• Knowledge and experience with Agile development methodologies (e.g. XP, Scrum)
• Champion of agile engineering practices (e.g. TDD, continuous integration, refactoring etc)
• Good understanding of design patterns and their application
• Experienced unit testing frameworks
• Computer Science (or related) degree
• Knowledge of/experience with Sitecore is an asset
• Knowledge of/experience with Ektron is an asset
• Knowledge of/experience with Sharepoint is an asset

Sounds like you? Then get in touch with me and I'll make an introduction.

Kate

Office Lens went live in the Windows Phone Store today. I happened to have a list of things to do on a whiteboard in my office, so I gave it a try. I had already taken a picture of the whiteboard to transcribe but I went back to the board with the app installed to see if I could save some time.

Here's the picture Office Lens took (resized to 400 pixels wide)

Here's how that looked when Office Lens cleaned it up and put it in a OneNote document for me (I copied the picture out of OneNote, cropped it and resized it):

Much nicer - the glare spots are gone and the background is cleaner. The skew that resulted from taking the picture on an angle (a defensive action to keep the glare out of the important parts of the image) is also gone. As is, this can go into an email. If my handwriting was neater, One Note could have tried to extract the text from it. But this is a lovely improvement and Office Lens is free, so why not give it a try?

Kate

I have updated my Visual Studio Pluralsight course for Visual Studio 2013 and Part 1 is now live. It covers features that were newly added in the 2013 release as well as older material (so you don't need to take the 2012 courses before you take this one.) It focuses on how to work Visual Studio rather than on the mechanics of a particular programming language or framework. The demos are all in C# but almost all of it applies to other languages equally well. (As C++ developers know, some things we don't get, but we're used to that.)

A number of people who've been using Visual Studio for years have reported to me that they decided to watch the course just to see what features I felt were worth covering - and then accidentally learned something! Chances are you will, too, so why not watch on double speed and see if something comes up you didn't know before?

Kate

Channel 9 has all 7 pieces of the MVA Day I did with James McNellis available online now!

We went very fast through this one day introduction. If you'd like a slightly saner pace, please check out my Pluralsight courses, C++ Fundamentals and C++ Fundamentals - Part 2. If you're not a programmer, and you'd like to "begin at the beginning" with C++, try Learn How to Program with C++. There is a free trial for the Pluralsight courses to get you started.

Kate

The C++ Language and the Standard Library both changed dramatically with the release of C++ 11. Some of these features were not implemented until Visual Studio 2013, and those are presented in this course. You'll learn about variadic templates, improvements in constructing and initializing variables, and rawnstring literals. In addition a number of productivity boosting enhancements in debugging, editing, and using libraries are in this version and you will learn how to take advantage of them.

In yesterday's session, I showed a Windows 8 store app that loads an image and then draws an animated ripple over it.

If you would like to get the code, and more importantly the documentation that explains the code, it's on Codeplex. Mixing and matching a little DirectX into your Windows 8 C++/CX app is remarkably easy, so why not take a quick look?

Kate

As it says on the Bristol GGD website:

Our April dinner is being held on Thursday 11th in conjunction with the ACCU 2013 conference.

The event starts at 7pm for 7.30pm, at the Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre. A few female IT professionals will talk briefly about themselves and their jobs. There will then be time for discussion and networking.

Read more and register http://girlgeeksataccu2013.eventbrite.co.uk/

I can't wait! I'm delighted to be one of the speakers and I'm looking forward to meeting lots of new people.

Kate

First, Use All of Visual Studio to Become a Better Developer

Most developers know how to use Visual Studio to do the basics of being a developer. You can create a solution, add projects to it, edit code, and run it. Easy, right? In this session, I want to show you how to be a better developer by using parts of Visual Studio you might not know about. Save hours of debugging time, move around your code more smoothly and don't lose your place, see what you want to see and find what you need to find. Demos will be in C# with Visual Studio 2012.

Second, C++ in 2013 – Why on earth?

There are so many languages a developer could use today. Yet some developers still use C++. Some developers are learning C++ when they already know C# and other younger languages. This session will show you why that is happening, and why you might want to learn the new C++ yourself. It's nothing like the C++ you remember, and it can be a very useful language for you to know.

Over the last few weeks, I've been accumulating links to appearances of mine, and it seems like a good idea to share these.

• OReilly webcast: This is a reasonably horrible recording (sound quality and video size) of a webcast I did back in August. It shows why C++ AMP is so cool and why you might care about it. I recorded it to promote the book but I'm not very happy with how it turned out. You'll probably do better with the recording of my Tech Ed talk.
• Pluralsight interview: This is specifically about my Using Visual Studio 2012 course. You can download the audio or read the transcript as you prefer.  My favourite quote from the conversation:

It’s not just like, oh, I saved five seconds. I can go home five seconds earlier today. It’s that you’re less likely to forget what you were doing because you don’t have to put so much time into the mechanics and you just stay in flow. And to me, that’s a ramping up of two or three times the amount of code I can produce when I use everything the tool has to offer.

• Dot Net Rocks panel at DevIntersection: Here Scott Allen, Michele Leroux Bustamante, Woody Pewitt, and I discuss whatever we feel like, with occasional leading questions from Carl and Richard, and some Canadian whisky too.

Even though I haven't been blogging much, I have been doing a lot, and I hope these links will help you to discover some of it.

Kate

While I was in Nashville as part of the Dot Net Rocks Roadtrip, we recorded an episode of The Tablet Show. The recording is online now and I'll have to give it a listen myself to remember what we talked about - Hilo, for sure, and C++ AMP, and just generally why C++ can be a great choice for tablet development.

Kate