C++ Exceptions for Smaller Firmware - Khalil Estell - CppCon 2024
Why Hacker News recommends it
Pointed to as the in-depth talk on exception mechanics and code size for embedded C++.
What it is
Khalil Estell's CppCon 2024 talk argues C++ exceptions can reduce binary size in firmware. He digs into how exceptions work and how to shrink their code footprint on embedded platforms.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2025 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec inetknght · 2025-09 · on “How is Ultrassembler so fast?”
> I don't have enough time to watch these kinds of presentations. Then let me pick and share some of my favorites that I found enlightening, and summarize with some information that I found useful. By far, the most useful one is Khalil Estell's presentation last year [0]. It's a fairly face paced but relatively deep dive into exception mechanics. At the end, he advocates for a new tool that would audit a program to determine what exceptions could be thrown. I think that's a flipping fantastic idea for a tool. Unfortunately I haven't seen any progress toward it -- if someone here knows where his tool is, or a similar tool, please reply! I did send him an email a few months ago inquiring about
Recommends bluGill · 2025-02 · on “Software development topics I've changed my mind on”
Khalil Estell has some great work on that. [this video] is one link - very low level technical of what is really happening. He has other talks and papers if you search his name.
Recommends mpyne · 2025-09 · on “How is Ultrassembler so fast?”
A specific presentation I'd point to is Khalil Estell's presentation on reducing exception code size on embedded platforms at [this video] But honestly you'd get vast majority of the benefit just by skimming through the slides at [LINK] With a couple of symbols you define yourself a lot of the associated g++ code size is sharply reduced while still allowing exceptions to work. (Slide 60 on)
Recommends neonz80 · 2025-11 · on “Async/Await is finally back in Zig”
There was an interesting talk about C++ exceptions in smaller firmware at CppCon last year: [this video] Basically, the overhead of exceptions is probably less than handling the same errors manually in any non-trivial program. Also, it's not like these table doesn't exist in other languages. Both Rust and Go have to unwind.
Recommends daemin · 2026-03 · on “Practical Guide to Bare Metal C++”
I just thought I'd mention that Khalil Estell is doing some work regarding exceptions in embedded and bare metal programming. In the first of his talks about this topic ( [this video] ) he mentions that a lot of the bloat in exception handling is including printf in order to print out the message when terminating the program. For those interested he has another presentation on this topic [LINK]
Cites inetknght · 2025-09 · on “How is Ultrassembler so fast?”
Update: it looks like link [4] is just a rehash of his talk from last year's cppcon [0]. [0]: [this video] [4]: [LINK]
Cites vodou · 2025-12 · on “The C++ standard for the F-35 Fighter Jet [video]”
Need to check it out. I guess you mean these: - C++ Exceptions Reduce Firmware Code Size, ACCU [1] - C++ Exceptions for Smaller Firmware, CppCon [2] [1]: [LINK] [2]: [this video]