PVS-Studio Team's Feedback on the C++ Russia 2015 Conference

Mar 01 2015

Author: Evgenii Ryzhkov

Two hours and a half on a train is a good time for writing an email of thanks to the conference's organizer Sergey Platonov and his team for having finally established a conference on C++ in Russia! Sergey's merits are really impressive, all the more so because he doesn't possess budgets of Microsoft's or Intel's scale. It turns out, however, that it is not the budget that matters but a longing and enthusiasm for doing something. That's why the lecturers invited by Sergey were just the best and the foreign guests were very friendly and kind. At the stands of JetBrains, Incredibuild, Kaspersky, and PVS-Studio, you could see, instead of talking heads, real professionals with whom both guests and neighbors were pleased to communicate. Below are our personal impressions of the conference.

The conference was held on February 27-28th, 2015, at the Izmailovo Alfa Hotel. We (Evgeny Ryzhkov and Andrey Karpov) decided to raise the participants' mood even more by handing out small chocolates to everyone in the morning.

By the way, if you met people with not one or two but a pile of chocolates, then know those were PVS-Studio clients - they had been granted additional bonuses :-).

But before that, of course, all the participants had to assemble their stands.

The guy in the photo seems to be saying, "What's the way out? PVS-Studio!"

Our stand was the roomiest, so we were the first to finish assembling it and proceeded to help our neighbors.

Helping to assemble JetBrains' stand

Meanwhile, Andrey started composing various writings out of remaining chocolates on the desks.

Accomplish the word before all chocolates are out

Those writings were quickly morphing though - first it was "C++11", then "C++", and finally "C".

The bravest ones put on a unicorn mask for a photo.

By the way, when I was setting off for the conference, my wife told me, "Watch yourself. Don't stare at girls there!" To which I replied skeptically that it would be a C++ conference with almost no girls at all. I couldn't have been more wrong! There were plenty of pretty and smart girls there! Which only benefited the whole event. I didn't take many photos of them, but hopefully you will see them too.

Now let's speak about the presentations themselves. The event schedule is available at the site, and the video will soon be posted too. Just don't you guys hurry the organizers with that. First, they need to have some rest. Second, the video needs processing, and it takes time. You'll get it all soon. Don't hasten things. All the presentations I managed to attend were just awesome. This kind of thing doesn't happen often; I guess it was made possible thanks to the narrow scope of the conference.

Andrey's presentation "The Price of an Error" was held on Saturday at 10 A.M. (the first on the schedule). When approaching the conference room, we saw a line of a few hundreds of people!!! Five minutes later, a woman's voice, "Everyone taking IELTS, please line up!" brought us back from shock and we proceeded to the conference room. However, there was quite a big audience by the beginning of our presentation too. I won't praise Andrey lest he put on airs. But the questions asked by the attendants at the end of the presentation and discussions in the lobby after it proved that people were really interested. Check the video for yourself.

What is my personal opinion of communicating with all those people? Well, I'm glad that programmers have finally got to know what static analyzers are about. Many have tried them, some are starting to integrate them with their development processes. It generally proves that this notion is becoming part of the development system. True, such problems as heads' lack of understanding and budget for tools like ours still persist. So, guys, keep trying to bring it home to your bosses that programmers' tools are vitally necessary. It's not for our sake - we'll earn our money alright selling our products to Europe and the USA. No, it's for yours - because introducing such tools (I don't even mean PVS-Studio now) into the development process first of all increases your personal competence level. Believe me, your bosses are no fools; you just need to help them make the right decision, convince them and show the benefit the company will get from integrating these tools into the development process. And if you succeed, they will willingly find money while you will get the chance to mention in your resume that you have an experience of integrating a certain tool into your team's development process.

Any remarks on the conference? Well, I can't recall any serious problems or troubles. Sergey is a wonderful organizer!

The audience approves of Sergey!

And as for small suggestions on improving some things (there's always something that can be improved), I will send them to Sergey in a personal email. Sergey, thank you for the wonderful job you do!