Teaching C++ to Game Development Students in the Age of LLMs with Tom Tesch

In this episode, Mathieu and Jason are joined by Ryan Keane to discuss his duck library, which allows polymorphism-like behaviour through reflection, along with his journey of learning C++ through exploring C++26's reflection mechanisms. Links rjk::duck - Zero boilerplate generic type erasure, powered by C++26 reflection - Ryan Keane Beautiful Type Erasure with C++26 Reflection - Ryan Keane A Duck Does More Than Quack: Synthesizing VTables with C++26 Reflection - Ryan Keane (CppCon 2026) P4148: protocol: Structural Subtyping for C++ - Jonathan Coe et al.

Mathieu and Jason are joined by Jon Bauman to discuss safety and interoperability between Rust and C++. They dig into what "safety" really means (there are several categories of safety), what can and can't be guaranteed, how C++ could become a memory-safe language, and the challenges of making Rust and C++ work well together. Jon is currently looking for sponsorship to continue this important work. You can contact Jon via [email protected]. Links Jon's talks - YouTube playlist P3874R1: Should C++ be a memory-safe language? - Jon Bauman, Timur Doumler, Nevin Liber, Ryan McDougall, Pablo Halpern, Jeff Garland, Jonathan Müller P3874 R1 Should C++ be a memory-safe language? - cplusplus/papers issue #2475 C++ Interoperability Initiative problem statement - Rust Foundation BorrowSanitizer - an LLVM sanitizer for finding aliasing violations across Rust, C and C++ C++/Rust Interop Problem Space Mapping - Rust Project Goals 2025H2 Miri example on the Rust Playground There is no memory safety without thread safety - Ralf Jung RustBelt: Logical Foundations for the Future of Safe Systems Programming - MPI-SWS Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language - Ralf Jung's PhD thesis

Mathieu and Jason are joined by Kevin Carpenter to discuss all aspects of being involved with a conference: from regular attendee, to volunteering, to speaker, volunteer coordinator, and catering concerns. Kevin also shares some of his insights into how credit card processing works, along with some of the challenges he's encountered. In this episode Jason also gives the guest some homework assignments for future conferences! News How fast is C++26's std::hive? - Daniel Lemire Tonight, ShadPS4 joins the hunt: uncovering bugs in the most popular PS4 emulator - Nikita Terentev, PVS-Studio

Jason and Mathieu are joined by the self-taught Alex (Waffl3x) to discuss the C++ standards committee, defaulted post-fix operators, and self-taught computer engineering. Alex shares his experience of joining the C++ Committee and his efforts to get more people involved. News Mateusz needs help with his logarithmic unit design EuroLLVM 2026 security related talks A set of papers related to safety in the July mailing Brno mailing (2026-07) Links Deducing this Clarify the behavior of floating-point overflow

Jason and Mathieu are joined by Mark Guidarelli to discuss the history of C++ and esoteric programming languages, Mark's own development history spanning four decades, and what "merging" used to mean before source control. News The code::dive 2026 call for papers is open Gor Nishanov, author of C++ coroutines, recently passed away C++ Documentary was released Check out the C++ Perf Quiz Links trix - Mark Guidarelli Mazes for Programmers - Jamis Buck Game Oriented Assembly Lisp - Wikipedia OpenGOAL Practical File System Design with the Be File System - Dominic Giampaolo (Internet Archive)

Jason and Mathieu are joined by Tom Tesch to discuss teaching C++ to game development students, how LLMs and chatbots are reshaping programming education and assessment, and the lessons that come from teaching on retro hardware like the NES. News Sourcetrail - interactive source explorer for C++/Java, fork maintained by Peter Most Links The Creature of Wellstown - student NES game discussed in the episode (itch.io) Game Education Case Study Microtalks - Tom Tesch et al. (GDC Vault)

Jason and Mathieu are joined by Chris Bieneman to discuss GPU programming and the evolution of HLSL, the challenges of floating-point determinism on GPUs, and lessons from over a decade of shading language and compiler work. News Sure, xor'ing a register with itself is the idiom for zeroing it out, but why not sub? - Raymond Chen, The Old New Thing Preventing Integer Overflow in Physical Computations - Mateusz Pusz, mp-units Let's check vibe code that acts like optimized C++ but is actually a mess - Andrey Karpov, PVS-Studio Links Developer Toolchain for the PlayStation 4 - Paul Robinson (2013 LLVM US Dev Meeting) HLSL: Decades in the Making - Chris Bieneman (Khronos Shading Languages Symposium 2026) GLSL: Origins, Observations and Opportunities - Randi Rost (Khronos Shading Languages Symposium 2026) Redefining the Software Engineering Profession for AI - Mark Russinovich & Scott Hanselman (ACM) Two Compilers, One Language, No Specification - Chris Bieneman (2024 LLVM Developers' Meeting) Ecma TC57 - HLSL Standardization Committee (GitHub) microsoft/hlsl-specs - HLSL Specifications (GitHub)

Jason and Mathieu are joined by Keith Stockdale to discuss C++26 news, his experience upgrading Sea of Thieves from C++14 to C++20 across compilers, and the practical challenges of raising compiler warning levels and enabling warnings as errors. C++26 is Done - Trip Report, March 2026 ISO C++ Standards Meeting Announcing Meeting C++ 2026 Dear ImGui Explorer Common Package Specification Is Out the Gate

Daniel Nikpayuk joins Jason to talk about ccTMP, his C++17 template metaprogramming library that builds a functional type system at compile time by encoding bytecode as template parameters in continuation-passing style — letting the C++ compiler itself optimise away the interpretation layer. They also cover Daniel's path into C++, from typesetting Inuktitut in LaTeX to his longer-term goal of a multimedia programming language for Indigenous storytelling. Cache-Explorer TeaScript C++ Library imrefl autocereal

Jason is joined this week by Jamie Pendergast to discuss the current job market, learning to program, and optimizing compilers. Designated Initializers, the best feature of C++20 · Mathieu Ropert Support for C++26 Reflection has been merged into GCC trunk! : r/cpp Latest News From Upcoming C++ Conferences (2026-01-14) : r/cpp Call for Papers - NDC TechTown 2026 | Software Conference for Embedded and Systems Programming Cyrex Optimizing Compiler