C++ Meetup in Stockholm, Sweden 2017

On the eleventh month of the year, our professional journey took us to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. We arrived at Tritech, our host for the event, and were welcomed to a cozy atmosphere reflecting good Swedish design against the outside cold weather. Members of the local, close-knit community started arriving for the first half hour of the event, when drinks were served and conversations started.

Our CTO Arno Schödl talked about "A Practical Approach to Error Handling", where he presented the method we use at think-cell to write more reliable software with less effort. This talk had a lot of relevance for both developers and non-developers (like our recruiting team). He started by sharing a short story of how he ended up doing what he does after a special experience in 2001. Then he went on to ask the audience about what do they do when they encounter an error. He was glad that none of the answers were the one that he was going to talk about, since he would be sharing something new with them.

Among his recommendations were the following: 1. Keep the program on a narrow path of correctness. This is the main goal. 2. Fix bugs. Do not just keep the system running. 3. Add a layer outside of your system that monitors it. 4. Devote time to write really good error handlers, so that 5% of the handlers handle 95% of errors. 5. Write error messages that actually help the user find the condition in the user’s computer that made the program fail.

At the end, he highlighted that we are hiring C++ developers to relocate to Berlin, and invited participants to send their CVs/resumes to hr@think-cell.com. Arno’s talk was followed by a good hour of networking and discussion about the topics he presented, and then two talks by Patricia Aas from Oslo. One focused on C++ for Java developers and the second one on security for Linux browsers, which was interesting for many of the attendees.

We would like to thank Achitz, Mats Bergman and team who did an excellent job organizing this event! We would be happy to come back to Sweden again. You can watch the video of the talk here and join the Stockholm user group by joining their Meetup Page.