Perspectives on Contracts for C++ - Lisa Lippincott - CppCon 2024

https://cppcon.org​ --- Perspectives on Contracts for C++ - Lisa Lippincott - CppCon 2024 --- For many years, members of the C++ working group, WG21, have tried to add support for contract assertions — preconditions, postconditions, and assertion statements within a function body — to the C++ language. It’s been a long and difficult road, but we now have a proposal (P2900, “Contracts for C++”) to add significant contract support in, we hope, C++26, with more complete support to follow in C++29. Looking back, the contracts feature has been unusually difficult and contentious. I contend that the difficulty is inherent in the feature: a contracts facility, by its nature, cannot be understood from any single point of view. In this lecture, I will explain why understanding contracts requires seeing the feature from a panoply of perspectives, and show how shifting between these perspectives allows one to make effective use of the facility. This lecture is derived from presentations made to the Language Evolution subgroup of WG21 at the St. Louis meeting in June 2024. --- Sponsored by JetBrains: https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/ --- Lisa Lippincott Lisa Lippincott designed the software architectures of Tanium and BigFix, two systems for managing large fleets of computers. She's also a language nerd, and has contributed to arcane parts of the C++ standard. In her spare time, she studies mathematical logic, and wants to make computer-checked proofs of correctness a routine part of programming. --- CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community. You will enjoy inspirational talks and a friendly atmosphere designed to help attendees learn from each other, meet interesting people, and generally have a stimulating experience. Taking place this year in Aurora, Colorado, near the Denver airport, and including multiple diverse tracks, the conference will appeal to anyone from C++ novices to experts. Annual CppCon Conference - https://www.cppcon.org   / cppcon   https://x.com/cppcon   / cppconference     / cppcon   https://mastodon.social/@CppCon --- Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: http://www.BashFilms.com YouTube Channel Managed by Digital Medium Ltd: https://events.digital-medium.co.uk --- #cpp #cplusplus #cppcon #cppprogramming #cplusplusprogramming #softwaredevelopment #softwareengineering #coding #code #computerscience #technology #technews #programming #programmer