Adding elements to arrays and changing variables during compilation – imperative meta-metaprogramming in C++
If you follow these steps, you might learn to write things normally impossible to do in compile time, such as self-registering factory.
Author: Dugi
Jack of all trades, master of several. Nowadays a C++ programmer with a PhD in physics and an avid metalhead. Efficient at breaking Linux systems. Struggling with occasional impulses for ultracrepidarianism.
C++20 Resumable functions: Goodbye state machines, no one will mourn you
C++20 allows writing functions that suspend and can continue at the next line. This has an amazing application at avoiding writing annoying and error-prone state machines. This article showcases how coroutines can clean up a function that would usually need an ugly state machine.
Error codes are far slower than exceptions
TL;DR On modern 64-bit PC architectures, C++ exceptions only add unreachable code with destructor calls into functions and their effect on performance is below 1%, but such low values are difficult to measure. Handling rare errors with return values requires additional branching that slows down the program in realistic scenarios by about 5% and are also less convenient. If an exception is actually thrown, stack unwinding costs about 2 µs per stack frame.
(Sort of) Reflection in C++11
This is yet another trick to achieve reflection-like functionality before Reflection TS, this time needing only C++11. It’s based on using CRTP to fill the object with carefully chosen garbage before initialisation.
Reflection in C++14
How to write a template function that takes a class and executes type-dependent code on all its member variables, without requiring the class to specifically support it?
Optimising a scene for VR in Unreal Engine
Since I bought Oculus Quest, I felt that it lacked a proper Doom-like action shooter. I created a scene in the editor based on what I envisioned, but it was absolutely impossible to run on Oculus Quest. This article describes various tricks I have used to bring it to Quest without too much sacrifice.
Using vectors in place of hashtables – not as dumb as it seems
Vector can find elements in linear time, hashtable in constant time. That’s a pretty elementary part of computer science. However, better complexity does not always mean it’s faster.
Development for Oculus Quest is totally doable on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
So I was told that Oculus SDK is Windows only and Linux gets no love. Bullshit.
Super compact serialisation of C++ classes
How about defining the variable, initialising it and writing code for serialisation and deserialisation on a single line of code?
Generic self-registering factory – no more need to write factories
It’s somewhat annoying that a factory needs to depend on all classes that inherit from the common interface. This issue can be avoided using a self-registering factory.