Triple trip report from ACCU, C++ Russia and C++Now 2018 – Part 1
Going to conferences is a great experience, to learn about your domain and meet people that work in it. Going to conferences can give you tools to write better code.
I’ve had the chance to go to (and speak at) three conferences over a month:
- ACCU in Bristol, UK at the beginning of April,
- C++ Russia in Saint-Petersburg, Russia in mid April,
- C++Now in Aspen, US at the beginning of May.
I haven’t seen many people attending all three of them, so I figured I could make a combined trip report, to give you an idea of what they’re like. And more importantly what you would get by attending either one.
And a huge thanks to the company I work for, Murex, for sending me all over the world of C++!
The point of going to conferences
In general, going to conferences makes you benefit from two things:
- learning stuff by watching the sessions,
- meeting people, sharing with them and learning from them.
Indeed, people at conferences tend to be very nice and friendly. It can be people that you’ve talked to on the Internet before, or simply people that you come across in the many interactions that conference organizers strive to make happen.
And there is also a third thing you can benefit from: being a speaker. It allows you to get your message out there. It’s great, but you don’t need to be a speaker to start benefiting from attending conferences.
Note that physically going there gets you all benefits. Indeed, even if you can watch all sessions on Youtube, it’s way more convenient to be there, because you dedicate several days watching talks. As opposed to catching up later on Youtube, where “later” turns, at least partly, into “never”.
And to meet people face to face, well, you kind of need to be there as well, right?
For the three conferences, ACCU, C++ Russia and C++Now, I will try to show what is special about them. What type of contents you can expect to see, and what sort of crew you should meet.
As a disclaimer, what follows is my own experience as a conference attendee, it’s biased, you’re not guaranteed to get the exact same experience as I did, you need to measure with a profiler on your platform (er, sorry wrong disclaimer), but I guess it will still outline some of the major differences between the conferences.
ACCU : Bristol, UK, beginning of April
ACCU is an association and a conference that has been around for a while. More than 16 years I reckon. This was my first time there and it was amazing.
The contents
Most of the talks revolve around C++, and I got the feeling that they aimed at a general audience. This is not a hard rule though. A handful of talks use other languages, and some talks are not even about programming per se. But the vast majority of talks are about C++.
Most sessions (talk + questions) last for 1h30, so there is time to go deep in a topic. Here are my favourite talks, to give you a feel of what you can see at ACCU.
Couroutines explained, by Dmitry Kandalov (can’t seem to find the video link). The talk could also have been called “Coroutines explained well by a patient speaker who wants you to understand”, as far as I’m concerned. A very pleasant talk, that started from the very basics of coroutines and delved into more advanced aspects. It also showed examples of coroutines in multiple languages to get the points across.
I also was at an rather unconventional but interesting talk about how to lead a team of software professionals, by Arjan van Leeuwen. Intriguingly enough, the title of the talk was How not to lead a team of software professionals (again, can’t find video link?), and told the story of a developer that was promoted as a manager without seeing it coming, and all the lessons he learned during the past years. A few things I could apply when I was back!
And I discovered Kevlin Henney. My friend Victor had told me “you absolutely have to come watch Kevlin Henney”. And so I did. And didn’t regret a second of it.
Kevlin Henney is a brilliant speaker. The kind of speakers that present simple ideas but that make you think, and with great deal of style. His talk was called Procedural Programming: It’s Back? It Never Went Away. It showed how procedural programming isn’t all that ancient and that bad, and that some of its ideas are still present in modern programming. Or for some of them, should be! With the authorisation of Kevlin, I’ve extracted an idea from this talk that I will present in details in a future blog post.
I also attended Kate Gregory’s Simplicity: not just for beginners. A lot of practical ideas, exposed in a way that was pleasant to follow. In this talk, Kate advocates for keeping things simple, and tries to define the thin limit between simple-elegant and simple-you-didn’t-think-this-through. Also a talk of which I’ve articulated my understanding into a blog post with the kind authorisation of Kate, publishing soon.
The people
In short, absolutely lovely, had the greatest time.
A lot of the people are software professionals coming from all over Europe, and a few even beyond that. People are here to enjoy the conference and to enjoy talking to you. I felt that first-timers and old-timers were treated alike, which was an enjoyable feeling since I was a first timer 🙂
And there were quite a few people! I couldn’t get hold of an actual number, but my rough estimate would be maybe 600 people. And I’ve had the same feeling as Arne Mertz expressed: even if we were a crowd, and even if it was my first time there, I felt that I was part of the ACCU family, right from the beginning. Don’t know how that magic operated.
The conference is four days long, there are decent breaks, and all the meals are organized by the conference, so you get plenty of opportunities to socialize. One of those opportunities is the speakers’ diners where attendees are mixed with speakers on a rotating scheme, to maximize interactions.
Things to note
The lightning talks are quite a thing. They are organized before diner and animated by Pete Goodiffe. And what an animation!
I was impressed by the quality of those 5-minutes talks. Some of them are made to learn stuff, and some are made to learn stuff (?) and have a great time. I’ve never laughed that hard watching lightning talks, to be honest. A real shot of energy if ever you needed one when nearing the end of the day.
Right, this trip report is much longer than I intended. We’re already more than 1000 words in and I haven’t touched upon C++ Russia nor C++Now yet. Why don’t we take a break, and keep those two for Part 2 of this Triple Trip Report of the C++ conferences of spring?
Hope that’s been useful to you and gave an idea of what ACCU was like. You should definitely try to make it there next year!
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