CppCon 2023

In this talk, we will trace our efforts to build consensus across our Engineering department on how we use C++ at Bloomberg. We will use the example of how we are introducing broader naming conventions across the company’s massive C++ codebase, impacting our package management infrastructure and build tools. We will describe the lessons we’ve learned and the pitfalls we fell into as we were trying to achieve that goal, so that attendees can apply these lessons within their own organizations when introducing their own set of C++ rules.

This will also highlight the value of journalism skills in approaching engineering questions. Most important are the willingness to seek out all sides of a question; being humble enough to truly listen to even your loudest critics; and the endurance to keep asking questions until the issues become completely clear.

Our effort involved input from more than 150 people across many different application and infrastructure teams, many with different needs and coding styles. We then developed a set of rules that worked, though we also realize that the right answer will likely require ongoing flexibility.