CppCon 2014: Scott Meyers 'Type Deduction and Why You Care'

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C++98 had template type deduction, and it worked so intuitively, there was little need to understand what took place under the covers. C++11 extends type deduction to include universal references, applies it to auto variables and lambda expressions, then throws in a special auto-only deduction rule. C++14 pushes the boundary further, adding two forms of function return type deduction (auto and decltype(auto)) for arbitrary functions and offering auto parameters for lambdas. The result is that what could be treated as a black box in C++98 has become a topic that practicing C++ developers really need to understand. This talk will give you the information you need to do that.
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Scott Meyers has been working with C++ since 1988. He recently finished his new book, "Effective Modern C++".
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[fmatthew]

Scott's talks make me shake my head in despair at the design decisions and complexity of the C++ type system.

[sky_is_the_limit_]

By watching this video, I understood why he retired too soon! He must have been frustrated by the nonsensical additions being haphazardly thrown into C++ by committees! Thanks Scott! I'll always be your big fan!

[sunilpatidar]

Just came here to revise the first two chapters of effective modern c++ by this guy himself.

[gast]

Good talk though it seems to me that those C++ committee members actually don't make things simple as possible. Do they realize that ordinary C++ programmers have to deal with the domain and application complexity as well on top of all these rules?

[erikvanvelzen]

Great talk. This is simple and we're all supposed to know this, yet it is so refreshing to see it all mentioned in once place.

[thestarinthesky_]

Great talk! Too bad we don't get to see you in CppCon anymore :( Thanks for all the wonderful works you've done!

[jianwang]

Wonderful! It is not easy to be one C++ expert who is always syncing with latest standardization.

[rationalcoder]

He has always seemed to me to be quite full of himself, but he is an undeniably good presenter. Great talk!

[Joahwhd]

This is an excellent, or probably the best, video on c++ type system. At the same time, it shows the level of insanity of modem c++ design. It's hard to believe a programming language can be designed so complicated, confusing and ugly. It'll be very interesting if someone can make a video explaining not just what it is, but all the design considerations behind this mess.

[NonTwinBrothers]

Excellent talk by Richard Clayderman!! 😊

[maxxmayhem]

Excellent video about an exciting feature in C++11 ... thanks for uploading

[treyquattro]

at 34:48 when someone in the audience points out a mistake and Scott acknowledges it, has the slide been updated because it looks correct to me based on what it says and what Scott has been saying prior.

[Dziaji]

At 35:00, there are literally no >= 1 in the entire slide. It says >1, just like he meant it to. The comment from the audience is wrong, and Scott agreed for some strange reason.

[magetaaaaaa]

I don't know much about the industry, but isn't this guy some C++ legend or something? Lol.

[antiHUMANDesigns]

I think Luke Skywalker when I see his hair.

[arkadye]

The webpage he gave says He-Man won it, just.

[logicboard]

This is truly attending a C++ class at a college

[georganatoly]

'back in my day' (with C) to make a generic interface you made the underlying structs and funcs an int or long and let someone else build some more specialized wrappers on top that by explicitly casting and packing their arbitrary data types into those ints, in effect treating an int or long or w/e as if they were assembly-like general registers, so that users of the higher level wrappers didn't have to worry about any implicit type deduction rules and the implementers didn't have to worry about edge cases cropping up unexpectedly (this was in effect using C's version of inheritance combined with C's much stronger encapsulation to achieve the same effect, trading quick but complicated/possibly brittle templates with slower, explicit, but more strictly defined generics)

[ulidtko]

Agreed. The type system of C++ is becoming a really screwed dump.

[jakobullmann]

To be honest, I like N3922... Immediately before slide 20 I thought: "This does not make sense." And then slide 20 came: "Yeah, that's how it should be."