CppCon 2018: Patrice Roy “Pessimistic Programming”

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We often write programs in such a way as to make them run fast. We want good average speed, high throughput, and we tend to be happy when benchmarks show that our peak running speed is better than expected.

However, it's sometimes useful to write programs where we want to make the worst-case scenario faster, or make it run at predictable speed, or even reduce variations in execution speed. Instead of concentrating our efforts on making the best or the average speed better, we sometimes need to make the worst case speed "less bad".

C++ is a wonderful language for such situations. C++ gives us a lot of control over what's going on, and we can use this control to our advantage.

The aim of this talk is to discuss techniques to make the execution speed of programs more predictable, and to guide the compiler towards generating code where worst-case execution speed respects some constraints. It will probably most interesting to intermediate audiences who are curious about how to address such issues, or who wonder why it is sometimes important to be pessimistic and worry about those times when program execution takes the slow path.
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Patrice Roy, Université de Sherbrooke
Professeur

Patrice Roy has been playing with C++, either professionally, for pleasure or (most of the time) both for over 20 years. After a few years doing R&D and working on military flight simulators, he moved on to academics and has been teaching computer science since 1998. Since 2005, he’s been involved more specifically in helping graduate students and professionals from the fields of real-time systems and game programming develop the skills they need to face today’s challenges. The rapid evolution of C++ in recent years has made his job even more enjoyable. He’s been a participating member in the ISO C++ Standards Committee since late 2014 and has been involved with the ISO Programming Language Vulnerabilities Committee since late 2015. He has five kids, and his wife ensures their house is home to a continuously changing number of cats, dogs and other animals.
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[YourCRTube]

Great topic, but not a good presentation - bad audio, the examples are not very readable (full slide with no color coding) and a bit rushed, plus not in any order or clear naming in the supplied link for download.

[samyaspapa]

It's a bummer we can't see all the code in the video. :(