Soliciting feedback for C++ portions of Chromium University

[Daniel Cheng]

Hello all,

There are two talks about C++ in Chromium University (well, there's actually only one in the playlist, but as far as I can tell, the slides and videos for both are public).

Through a series of events, I ended up with the task of updating them this year. I made a few minor updates to the slides for C++ as a Second Language, but C++ Memory is unchanged. However, I wanted to get some broader community input/perspective on the slides. If you have ideas or feedback on the slides (or are interested in curating this content in the long-term), please do contribute or let me know.

Some particular topics I'm wondering:

- are there topics that should be covered but aren't?

- should the slides be more Chromium-specific? They are currently fairly generic for the most part; there are some references to Chromium-specific guidelines but not many. The slides occasionally cover topics that should be rarely-used in Chromium (e.g. bare `new` and `delete`)

- should there be a followup talk that's more focused on Chrome development specifically, e.g. raw_ptr<T>, base::OnceCallback, base::TaskRunner?

- what about Blink/Oilpan? (This feels complex enough that maybe it should be its own thing)

- are there topics that shouldn't be covered/would be better scoped to a separate presentation/session?

Feel free to reply here, or in comments on the slides. Thanks!

Daniel

[David Benjamin]

Not sure the context of the slides, but some of the examples don't quite match Chromium and Google C++ style. (ComputeHarmony.cpp and ComputeHarmony.h instead of compute_harmony.cc and compute_harmony.h.) If they're meant to be for Chromium style projects, probably worth aligning in style. If they're meant for other contexts, ignore me. :-)

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[Gabriel Charette]

Le lun. 18 août 2025, 13 h 56, Daniel Cheng <dch...@chromium.org> a écrit :

Hello all,

There are two talks about C++ in Chromium University (well, there's actually only one in the playlist, but as far as I can tell, the slides and videos for both are public).

Through a series of events, I ended up with the task of updating them this year. I made a few minor updates to the slides for C++ as a Second Language, but C++ Memory is unchanged. However, I wanted to get some broader community input/perspective on the slides. If you have ideas or feedback on the slides (or are interested in curating this content in the long-term), please do contribute or let me know.

Some particular topics I'm wondering:

- are there topics that should be covered but aren't?

- should the slides be more Chromium-specific? They are currently fairly generic for the most part; there are some references to Chromium-specific guidelines but not many. The slides occasionally cover topics that should be rarely-used in Chromium (e.g. bare `new` and `delete`)

- should there be a followup talk that's more focused on Chrome development specifically, e.g. raw_ptr<T>, base::OnceCallback, base::TaskRunner?

"Life of a Process" touches on those topic a bit.

- what about Blink/Oilpan? (This feels complex enough that maybe it should be its own thing)

- are there topics that shouldn't be covered/would be better scoped to a separate presentation/session?

Feel free to reply here, or in comments on the slides. Thanks!

Daniel

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[Daniel Cheng]

I've tried to update things to match Chrome style where possible. I'll fix that one as well.

Daniel

[Chris Blume]

Oh hi!
I recognize those slides. ;D

1.) Do whatever you want with them.
2.) When I originally checked for feedback, there were comments to cover Chromium things (Blink/Oilpan, base::OnceCallback).
3.) I designed the talks to be more general C++ and understanding so the other pieces (like Chromium-specific things) could "click" more easily. FWIW, people were still absorbing the shift to C++11 then. Feel free to adjust based on your desires/understanding of the audience. (See #1)
4.) I got feedback that the RAII sections (both construction and destruction) were not clear. If you're going to make changes, you might want to consider revisiting that section as well.
5.) The playlist linked is when we presented from home due to COVID. I had just moved into a house and my setup was terrible. The playlist from a previous year would be a better reference for how to present the material.

[Nico Weber]

Maybe worth mentioning libc++ hardening, UNSAFE_TODO, etc?

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[Roland Bock]

Hi,

Some thoughts:

C++ Memory: 

• Slide 6 "C++ is extremely low level.".
  I would probably say something like "C++ provides extremely low level controls if and when you need them".

Second language:

• Free functions
• The first sentence in the whole deck is "Pure object orientation doesn’t make sense for all cases."
  While I agree, to me that kinda validates typical biases against C++: Even the opening statement is weird and definitely made for experts only.
• Starting with a classic "Hello world" example would avoid this odd start: Everybody knows "hello world", they feel at home. And behold: There is a free function (main) and an object (std::cout) and operator<< (overloading) and an include directive.
  All present in an example that everybody knows from their previous languages.
• I would drop most references to Java (partly because I came from C, perl, php, and a few other languages, but also because it seems more important to refer to the respective concepts like garbage collection)
• Slide 21: I would rename the DestructorExample. It looks like this is a special thing. But every class and object has a destructor. And if you don't write one, the compiler will generate it for you. both pieces are crucial IMO (every and auto-generated)

Cheers,

Roland

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