For a long time C++ has been one of our main development languages. And it seems most of the automotive industry finally agrees that this is not a bad choice.
A couple of years back the situation was quite different and we had to convince a lot of people that C++ code can indeed be as efficient as plain old C.
But C++ is also changing quite a lot thanks to the new ISO standard C++11. And admittedly it is quite a huge language…ample opportunity to use it in a good or bad way. For that reason we felt it was justified to organize a 3-day C++ event with some real C++ experts. So last week we invited Dave Abrahams and Jon Kalb to share some of their knowledge with us.
In one of our current projects we are closely working together with BMW. Pleasently lot’s of our developer peers are also very keen on writing high quality embedded software using C++ so a lot of them joined the event which in the end was hosted at BMW facilities.
In 3 densly packed days we learned a lot about state-of-the art programming techninques and new C++11 language features. Both Dave and Jon did an excellent job explaining difficult concepts to their audience. While it’s quite obvious that 3 days is not nearly enough time, the event did already have a very positive effect: it sparked a new interest on different C++ related topics that for sure will in the end help everyone to improve their skills as software developers.
Thanks to Dave Abrahams and Jon Kalb for some amazing sessions and to BMW for hosting the event in their awesome conference center!
6 Comments
I bet some really good ideas came from this gathering. I hope we can promote C++11 as the most portable language and maybe even see academic programs start stressing it over Java. or is that too optimistic?
bs4NME Awesome article.Much thanks again. Awesome.
Which platform do you target? C++11 compiler support is still pretty rough
we mostly target Freescale MPC (PPC family) and ARM. Our core business is in the automotive domain and, you are right, C++11 compiler support indeed is still pretty rough. But since most compilers we use either rely on the EDG frontend or gcc a lot of C++11 features will come for free.
One reason that wider support for C++11 will probably be limited for quite some time is that there still seems not to be a lot of active interest in C++11 among the typical customers of some of the embedded compilers we use (e.g. Windriver). So the compiler vendors claim that this is not yet a major concern for them. Funny…since C++11 actually IS the standard now
Interesting.
To be honest I was surprised by the choice of bleeding edge C++ in the automotive context considering:
– it’s so easy to drastically increase code size when using templates (also maybe lambdas?)
– it’s also easy to trash code cache, not to mention data cache when going OOP by the book.
About C++ 11 in GCC, I stumbled upon this article recently that questions the long term viability of C++11 in GCC: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI4NDU
In that respect, my intention is not to spread FUD but I’m curious how fast C++ advances in upstream GCC find their way to automotive dev boards toolchains.
Good luck!
Thanks very much for having us. It was fun to be experience the BMW campus and It is always a pleasure to talk to smart people that are hungry to learn more.
Recent Posts
Archives
© 2013 E.S.R.Labs GmbH - All rights reserved.