1 HN user recommended this talk1 month2016–2021score 1.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends it as a careful, entertaining talk on low-level optimization that shows how textbook algorithms can be sped up.
Andrei Alexandrescu's ACCU 2016 talk previews material from his book on writing fast code, with a focus on optimization techniques such as sentinels and faster search.
“If you’re skeptical, I really do encourage you to watch, he’s not sloppy.” (HN, 2020)
See Alexandrescu’s Fastware talk on how amazingly sentinels can improve even textbook algorithms, and how to apply the approach intelligently. E.g., for a linear search, overwrite the last element with the sought after value, and do a tiny bit of work to make that safe and to undo it before return. If you’re skeptical, I really do encourage you to watch, he’s not sloppy. [this video]
How sentinels speed up textbook algorithms and how to apply them sensibly
Assuming you're talking about Concepts, I've heard Andrei Alexandrescu, for example, challenge that hope [0], but I'd be happy to hear this has been fixed. [0] [this video]
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