It might be that they're in the top 10% of interest in ramping up in these types of things. I'm sure I'm not alone in having little interest in attending a technical conference that mostly covers things I already know - I'm there either to learn, in which case I want new content - not rehashed content - or I'm there for other reasons. Low rates of already using these tools, then, may make a certain amount of sense. If they were already putting them to practice, they may be less likely to attend.

Or I could be way off base - I've never attended CppCon. And I do love me some ASAN when I need it ;)

Indeed. If you contrast it against other engineering disciplines, even a closely related one like hardware engineering or FPGA engineering, the mindset is totally different. The amount of checks, reviews and many other practices is astounding.

... which is even more surprising given that many of these practices (in software) are almost-free. Granted, there aren't compile-time guarantees for most of these things, but with ASAN/UBSAN/etc. you'll certainly find the top 90% of your problems pretty fast.

In my experience diligent programming and going to conferences (or giving talks at conferences) are inversely correlated. Many conference pundits do little to no actual programming in the first place.

I'm not sure exactly what you're driving at, but for conferences like CppCon (and similar), the driving factor is usually technical interest and not just a way to waste time away from work (while drinking every night or whatever[1]).

So... could you explain what you're insinuating so I could respond to that instead of just guessing?

[1] Not sure about CppCon, but all "technical" conferences I've personally been to did have a lot of late-night drinking, but that was secondary to the technical stuff.