C++26 for Lazy Programmers • Will Briggs & Todd Montgomery • GOTO 2026

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. #GOTOcon #GOTObookclub http://gotopia.tech/bookclub Check out more here: https://gotopia.tech/episodes/454 Will Briggs - Professor of Computer Science at University of Lynchburg & Author of "C++26 for Lazy Programmers" Todd L. Montgomery - Software Professional & Advisor at DRW & Co-Author & Co-Maintainer of Aeron, Agrona & Simple Binary Encoding (SBE) RESOURCES Will https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-briggs-32635714a https://www.lynchburg.edu/will-briggs Todd https://twitter.com/toddlmontgomery https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-montgomery-413a3216 https://github.com/tmontgomery DESCRIPTION Will Briggs — a University of Lynchburg computer science professor with three decades of experience teaching C++ — joins Todd L. Montgomery to talk through C++26 for Lazy Programmers, and the conversation opens on the question every language-learning book has to answer right now: does learning a language still matter when AI writes so much of the code? Briggs' answer is refreshingly unhyped — he tests a new AI tool about once a year on a real, medium-difficulty problem, and as of this year's attempt, it still couldn't solve one, though it's genuinely useful for speeding up work he already understands. Both he and Montgomery land on the same practical conclusion: reading code fluently matters more now, not less, because code is increasingly how AI communicates back to you, and you can't debug or direct what you can't read. The rest of the conversation is a genuine craft discussion about how to teach C++ well — sequencing concepts so a beginner never has to hold two new ideas at once, giving double duty to topics like operator overloading and custom string classes, and deliberately introducing pointers nineteen chapters before ever using the word "pointer", by building the underlying mental model through arrays first. For engineers who've been away from C++ or are watching it from a distance, there are a few sharp, specific takeaways: Briggs points to AI-generated C++ as noticeably more reliable than AI-generated Java, plausibly because of training-corpus quality rather than anything about the language itself, and he's blunt about C++26's biggest usability problem being proliferation, not power — he cites a case of 25 different ways floating around online just to initialize a single number, and argues the language needs fewer new ways to do old things. He also makes a case, backed by the TIOBE index, that C — a language from 1972 — is still the second most popular language in the world, and that learning C++ specifically (precisely because it's hard and concept-dense) is some of the best preparation available for picking up nearly any other language quickly afterward. TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 01:08 Is software development still a career? 05:06 Why "lazy" is a trick — and a confession 11:29 Ordering concepts so nobody gets lost 13:49 C++'s real problem: Too many ways to do anything 16:14 Teaching pointers without the p-word 24:59 Takeaways from the book 27:26 Outro RECOMMENDED BOOKS Will Briggs • C++26 for Lazy Programmers • https://amzn.to/4d5eDxp Frances Buontempo • Learn C++ by Example • https://amzn.to/4rgxSZX Bjarne Stroustrup • The C++ Programming Language • https://amzn.to/3U3ZeEx Marius Bancila • Template Metaprogramming with C++ • https://amzn.to/3VGnlu8 https://bsky.app/profile/gotocon.com https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.instagram.com/goto_con https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #Cpp #Cpp26 #CppProgramming #Pointers #LazyProgrammers #SoftwareEngineering #TodayInTech #Programming #WillBriggs #ToddMontgomery #GOTO #BookClub CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1