Random distributions are not one-size-fits-all (part 2)
In this part, we will look at different algorithms for generating uniformly distributed random numbers and determine whether they fit specific use cases better than Lemire's algorithm. … »
Random distributions are not one-size-fits-all (part 1)
Recently I was again on CppCast, and again I talked about C++'s standard library support for random numbers. One of the things I said was that random distributions are not one-size-fits-all. This post is about how this applies to Lemire's algorithm for generating uniformly distributed integers. … »
The Little Things: The Missing Performance in std::vector
`std::vector` is often said to be the default container, because it provides good baseline performance for common operations. Recently, I experimented with a simple API change that can improve the performance of a common usage pattern by 10+ %. … »
Stop talking about Amdahl's law
Without talking about Gustafson's law and the assumptions both make. … »
The Little Things: Why you should always have benchmarks ready
At the end of January, I removed some low-hanging allocations from Catch2. This meant that running the SelfTest binary in v3.3.1 made 8k fewer allocations, but it also made section tracking in v3.3.1 ~4x slower. This post is about how that happened and what we can learn from this. … »
The Little Things: My ?radical? opinions about unit tests
Due to maintaining Catch2 and generally caring about SW correctness, I spend _a lot_ of my time thinking about tests. This has left me with many opinions about tests, some conventional and some heterodox. … »
NDC TechTown 2022: Trip Report
Last week I was at NDC TechTown 2022, and I decided to write down my thoughts on the talks I saw (including the two talks given at the meetup before the conference) and other related things. … »
The Little Things: Comparing Floating Point Numbers
There is a lot of confusion about floating-point numbers and a lot of bad advice going around. IEEE-754 floating-point numbers are a complex beast, and comparing them is not always easy, but in this post, we will take a look at different approaches and their tradeoffs. … »