Lessons Learnt From Building Critical Real Time Applications
"The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build" - Bjarne Stroustrup
C++ is widely used in critical real-time systems across various domains such as Aerospace, Automotive and Defense to name a few and these systems usually have long lifecycles with extended maintenance cycles. Serious thought must be put into designing and implementing reliable, secure and maintainable solutions.
Software design is more an art than science and unless we understand where we are coming from we are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past despite adopting newer features.
This talk focuses on the author's first-hand experience with designing and implementing critical real-time embedded systems in C++. Getting your class design right is a key factor in building a robust performant system with a strong foundation. This talk will focus on getting your basics right regardless of which version of C++ you are using. Drawing from his experience, the speaker will discuss aspects of class design, design patterns, exploring composition and inheritance, monolithic and minimal classes, abstract interfaces, non-member functions, public and private members, safe overriding, virtual and non-virtual functions, implicit conversions, PIMPL idiom, data hiding and more and how to get these right. A quick overview of widely accepted core C++ guidelines will round off the talk. The information presented will be applicable to most systems built using C++. A key takeaway for the audience will be a good understanding of critical C++ concepts needed to build a software system which is reliable, performant, extendable and maintainable.
Prabhu Missier
Prabhu Missier has built safety critical real time embedded applications in the Avionics, Automotive Electronics, Data management and Network Security domains while working at Fortune 500 firms and startups. These days he builds software for the defense sector and also runs a startup.
While not coding he can be found trekking in California and Australia.