Seminars in Germany next Fall

Those of you who like to plan things far in advance will be pleased to know that
we've chosen the dates, topics, and location for my C++ seminars next fall in
Stuttgart, Germany. In addition to the seminar on using C++ in embedded systems
that I've given for several years, I'll be giving my overview of C++0x (suitably
updated to take into account the latest efforts by compiler vendors and the
standardization committee) as well as a new seminar on how to write C++ software
that runs very quickly (i.e., "Fastware! for C++"). As is the case for all my
scheduled public presentations, details are available at my "Upcoming Talks
page," http://www.aristeia.com/seminars.html .

Ich hoffe, Sie nächstes Jahr in Stuttgart zu sehen!

Scott

C++0x Training Course Extended to Three Days

I mentioned in a July message that the debut of my new training course on C++0x
would take place in late September, and that debut has now taken place. The
course was a lot of fun, but I was surprised to discover that the quantity and
depth of the material requires substantially more time to cover than I'd
anticipated. I've hence extended the course from two to three days, although a
two-day version is still available. (It omits most coverage of TR1-based
library components.)

The public world debut of the new "extended dance remix" version of my overview
of C++0x will take place in Bellevue, Washington, in early December. Details
are available at http://construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=17&id=115 . I hope to see you
there.

Scott

"97 Things" Contribution

You may be familiar with O'Reilly's "97 Things" series, which currently consists
of "97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know" (
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596522698/ ) and "97 Things Every Project Manager
Should Know" ( http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596804169/ ). There's now a
programmer-centric version in the works under the editorship of Kevlin Henney:
"97 Things Every Programmer Should Know;" wiki at
http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/97_Things_Every_Programmer\
_Should_Know .

I was asked to write a contribution for this project, so I decided to revise my
2004 IEEE Software article to fit the "97 Things" length restriction of 500
words. The result is at
http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Make_Interfaces_Easy_to_Us\
e_Correctly_and_Hard_to_Use_Incorrectly . I hope you like this concentrated
version of my advice to "Make Interfaces easy to use correctly and hard to use
incorrectly," and I encourage you to look over the other articles at the
project's site -- and possibly even add your own.

Scott

C++0x Seminar in December in Bellevue, Washington, USA

The fine folks at Construx Software in Bellevue, Washington, and I have teamed
up to schedule my new two-day intensive overview of C++0x on December 1-2.
Details are available at http://construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=17&id=115 . This
will be the first public presentation of the seminar in North America, and it
will benefit from the improvements I'll make after its world debut in Stuttgart,
Germany, at the end of September (
http://www.qasystems.de/html/deutsch/seminare/seminardetail/seminardetail14.php
), as well as whatever updates I make following the next C++ Standardization
meeting in October.

I hope to see you in Bellevue (or Stuttgart!) to talk lambdas, rvalue
references, hash tables, regular expressions, variadic templates, attributes,
and a whole lot more.

Scott

New Training Course on C++0x

I've just completed development of a new C++ training course, this one on the
new features in C++0x (the forthcoming revised standard for C++). My original
plan had been to develop a one-day seminar, but it turns out that C++0x has so
many new features, trying to describe and explore even the "primary" ones in
only one day just isn't possible. So the course runs two days. Furthermore,
recent compiler releases (e.g., VC10, which is now in publicly available beta,
and gcc 4.4) support a surprisingly large number of C++0x features, so even as
the C++ standardization committee hammers out the final details of the next
version of C++, you can start getting experience with parts of the enhanced
language and standard library right now. If my experience is any indication,
your new best friend in C++0x will be "auto," and, especially if you're doing
multithreaded programming, you're likely to develop a serious fondness for
lambdas.

The new course is described at http://www.aristeia.com/C++0x.html , and its
public world premiere will take place in Stuttgart, Germany, at the end of
September (link available at http://www.aristeia.com/seminars.html ). If you're
interested in knowing more about the course or if you'd like to consider booking
it for presentation at your company, let me know.

Scott

Video of my TOC Talk Now Available

The talk I gave at the February Tools of Change in Publishing conference is now
available at http://blip.tv/file/1976570 . It's aimed at people in the
publishing industry, so it's not terribly technical, but if you're interested in
my take on what authors need to think about when writing for multiple output
devices, you might want to take a look. (An alternative is to look through the
entries of my blog for Fastware! at http://fastwareproject.blogspot.com/ .)

Speaking of having book content available on multiple devices, I've recently
discovered that some of my books are available on electronic devices other than
Kindle. This was news not just to me, but also to my editor, so we're in the
process of trying to figure out what's available where and why. Our goal is to
make everything available everywhere. Once I have a clearer picture of the
availability of my books on different devices, I'll post details to this list.

Scott

Summer/Fall Seminars in Vienna and Stuttgart

My annual collaboration with QA Systems in Germany will continue this year in
Stuttgart with a five-day schedule that includes two new seminars, one on C++0x,
the other a generalization of my "High-Performance C++ Programming" seminar
called "Fastware with C++." Dates are in September and October, and you can
find all the details at my Upcoming Talks page,
http://www.aristeia.com/seminars.html .

New this year is a series of four technical seminars in Vienna (Wien) in June,
including my language-independent presentation on producing high-quality
software, as well as three in-depth C++ topics. The topics I'll discuss in
Vienna are different from those I'll address in Stuttgart. These seminars are
also in collaboration with QA Systems, and details are available at
http://www.aristeia.com/seminars.html .

I hope to see you in Vienna or Stuttgart...or both!

Scott

Electronic Options for my Books

Executive Summary: my books are now available as DRM-free PDFs, for the Kindle,
or via Safari for both online viewing and PDF download. You now have multiple
options for reading my "Effective" books without harming any trees.

* * * * *

[DRM-Free PDFs]

I've mentioned in the past that I've been working on PDF versions of my books.
Those are now available, DRM-free and chock-full of linked navigation in all the
ways I believe you have a right to expect: tables of contents, indices,
cross-references, URLs, mailtos, the whole nine yards. In fact, they've been
available since October, but I've held off officially announcing them until now,
because there were a few bureaucratic loose ends that didn't get tied up until
last week. Information on the PDFs is available at
http://scottmeyers-ebooks.com/ .

[Kindle]

Unbeknownst to me until about an hour ago, two of my books -- Effective C++ and
Effective STL -- are now available for Amazon's Kindle. I haven't seen these
editions myself, so I can't tell you anything about them. Since I don't have a
Kindle, this is unlikely to change anytime soon. If you try these editions,
please let me know what you think of them. You'll find links to the Kindle
editions of these books at http://www.aristeia.com/books.html .

[Safari]

My books have been available for online viewing via Safari for a while, but only
last week did I learn that Safari also sells PDF versions for download. These
PDFs were prepared without my involvement, and I haven't yet seen them myself,
but my guess is that they will offer fewer features than the PDFs I mentioned
above. They may be priced more attractively, however. The entrée to the world
of Safari is http://www.safaribooksonline.com/ .


I'll do my best to keep my books page ( http://www.aristeia.com/books.html ) up
to date regarding the various delivery options for my books, but sometimes new
editions come out without my knowing about it. (The author is always the last
to know!) If you find a version not listed at my site, please tell me about it.

Personally, I find that print and electronic versions of books have
complementary strengths and weaknesses, so I'm pleased that my books are now
offered in so many formats. I hope you'll take a look at the options available
and, if you try one or more of the non-print versions, let me know how you like
them. For the book I'm working on now (check out http://fastwarebook.com/ --
which needs a lot of work, sigh -- if you are interested), my plan is to target
electronic publication as the primary delivery mechanism, so I'm quite
interested in what works and what doesn't.

Scott

Seminar Scheduled: C++ in Embedded Systems

I'll be giving my two-day intensive seminar on making effective use of C++ in
embedded systems on March 30-31 in Beaverton, Oregon. Details are available at
http://www.cpd.ogi.edu/coursespecific.asp?pam=2457 . This is one of my favorite
training courses, because the topics range from the very lowest level language
issues (e.g., what is the cost of using various C++ features?, what's a good way
to model memory-mapped IO?) to higher-level process issues (e.g., how can we
approach the development of real-time and safety-critical systems in C++?). If
you're interested in the use of C++ for developing embedded software, I hope
you'll consider attending this seminar.

Scott

Upcoming Talks in New York City and Santa Clara, California

On February 10, I'll be giving a talk at the "Tools of Change" publishing
conference. The topic is "Authoring Challenges in a Multiplatform World." As
the conference and talk title should suggest, it's not a talk about software
development, it's a talk about what I think authors need to worry about as we
make the transition from paper-based publication to a mix of paper and
electronic reading devices. If you've been reading my Fastware! blog (
http://fastwareproject.blogspot.com/ ), you'll have a good idea of the flavor of
the talk. Links to the conference and the talk description are at my Upcoming
Talks page: http://www.aristeia.com/seminars.html

In March, I'll be making my usual visit to the Software Development conference
in Santa Clara, CA, where I'll be giving one full-day language-independent
tutorial on software quality and three shorter hard-core C++ talks. Links to
the conference and talk descriptions are also at my Upcoming Talks page:
http://www.aristeia.com/seminars.html

I hope to see you at one or both events.

Scott