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De-fragmenting C++: Making Exceptions and RTTI More Affordable and Usable - Herb Sutter CppCon 2019

CppCon · talk · Watch on YouTube

C, C++, Rust, Go & systems languagesProgramming language design

What it is

Herb Sutter's CppCon 2019 talk on the split in the C++ community over exceptions and RTTI. He proposes making exceptions cheaper and more usable, including a zero-overhead, Result-like design.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Pointed to whenever C++ exception overhead, bans on exceptions or error-handling alternatives come up.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2020, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “Herb Sutter made an excellent presentation about this”

    Explains the C++ community split over exceptions and proposed fixes

    je42, 2020-01 · Recommendation · in “Tim Sweeney: Eliminating C++ exceptions gave 15% speedup”

  2. “I can really recommend this talk”

    Sutter's Result-like exception proposal and RTTI

    Felk, 2020-02 · Recommendation · in “Investigating the Performance Overhead of C++ Exceptions”

  3. “In particular, his 2019 presentation [2] describes different error handling techniques”

    Surveys error handling techniques leading to std::expected

    inetknght, 2025-09 · Recommendation · in “How is Ultrassembler so fast?”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: c++, exceptions, rtti, herb sutter, error handling, zero-overhead

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