On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 11:36:54AM -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
Sounds like it's not for you... yet. One day you will begin to appreciate the value of abstraction with performance. Come back and see us then :-)
"Abstraction" might be what is bothering me.. but let's postpone that. (i.e. it might be that i'm working on a too concrete level, without planning for parametrization.. as you've already mentioned.)
So you no longer wonder?
Well, no :)
Optimizing iter_swap is hardly premature. It is a fundamental operation that governs the efficiency of many algorithms in the standard library.
Ok, I've never used it myself.
Well, I *do not know* whether I want to do template metaprogramming in the sense as in your book. This was the starting point for this whole discussion. I coded a van-Emde Boas tree via template metaprogramming (simple recursion), and that has had little to do with types.
What for?
Hmm, what "what for"? vEB-tree? I needed O(lg lg n) priority queue. Why metaprogramming: it's a recursive data structure where the same algorithm is executed at every level, with specialization at 0th level. It had to be fast, so I unrolled the recursion at compile-time.
OK, thanks. Anyway, I admire yours and Joels (and others') efforts, but.. let's declare 1:0 in favor of MPL and close the discussion.
Was there a contest? Did I miss something?
A figure of speech. As in, "given my situation and time constraints, I have to postpone tackling MPL and fusion for later". I asked about fusion because I've seen the other mail, and thought it might be easier to start doing something with it (more precisely: the manual mentions compile-time and *run-time*, and that made it look "easier"). Now that you've said that it heavily builds on MPL.. the situation is rather clear: postpone.
I'll steer clear of MPL/fusion for a while more. Maybe the time has come for me to switch to Java, JITs are steadily getting better :-)
Ohhh... don't do that. Or at least download and read Stepanov's "elements of programming" slides before you do. :-)
Oh, the slides have grown very much lately, thanks for the tip! (I've browsed through an early draft of 300-ish pages a while back ago..)