SD Best Practices in Boston is being held the week of September 11th.
Please see <http://www.sdexpo.com/> for conference details.

I'll be giving five talks:

Tuesday, 8:30am: High-Level Coding in C++
Abstract:
This talk discusses how code can be written in modern C++ to minimize
error and maximize programmer productivity without sacrificing (and
typically improving) speed. In particular, we'll examine how to
reduce or eliminate use of arrays, pointers, loops, and the
if-statement.

Tuesday, 1:45 pm: Do You Copy?
Abstract:
What everyone should know about C++ copy operations; idioms,
mechanics, and common errors. We also discuss the closely related
areas of direct vs. copy initialization semantics, the return value
optimizations, copy-like member template operations, and effective
swap implementations.

Wednesday, 3:45pm: Mechanics and Applications of Class Template
Partial Specialization
Abstract:
Class template partial specialization is a straightforward C++
language feature that is vastly underused. This talk covers the
basics of partial specialization mechanics and shows how the feature
may be used in straightforward ways to customize code based on
statically-available information. We'll also show how the feature
may be used in less obvious ways to supplant and simplify function
template overloading, extract information about types, uninstantiate
templates, and rebind allocators without using the rebind mechanism.

Thursday, 8:30am: Welcome Visitors
Abstract:
Does the Visitor pattern have you stumped or just annoyed? This class
will take you through the standard GOF Visitor, Robert Martin's
Acyclic Visitor, and Andrei Alexandrescu's ad hoc Visitor. By the end
of the class, you and Visitor will come to understand and respect each
other.

Thursday, 1:45pm: C++ Hierarchy Design Idioms
Abstract:
While C++ itself has relatively few rules on how the language may be
employed, the community of competent C++ programmers employs a large
set of implicit design and coding idioms. This class examines a
number of generally accepted low and mid level design idioms for class
hierarchies. We'll cover base and derived classes, coding for
polymorphism and safety, and the interplay of various design forces on
the eventual shape of the hierarchy.