Empirically Measuring, & Reducing, C++’s Accidental Complexity
summary
Catalogs 533 language rules and finds ~360 are accidental complexity, ~150 essential, and 25 essentially unavoidable; parameter passing (≈23%) and initialization (≈7%) together account for ~30% of recorded guidance. Proposes intent-based qualifiers (in, inout, out, move, forward), provides clang/Godbolt prototypes (cppx.godbolt.org) and examples showing identical runtime code but smaller object size (four-overload assembly ~250 lines vs one function ~120 lines). Prototypes work and promise to remove boilerplate and diagnostics for definite-first/last use.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Conference opening
- 1:14Motivation for measuring complexity
- 12:09Empirical cataloging of C++ rules
- 29:18Proposal for simpler parameter passing
- 48:22Simplifying initialization and out parameters
- 1:05:16Q&A session
- 1:20:32Closing remarks
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