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From the Publisher
How has your background helped you to write this book?
I started programming as a college student when even the simplest programs had to be written with performance in mind. While times have changed, I kept finding myself working in the areas where the hardware capabilities were never enough: first, in computational physics and then in electronic design automation. By choice or circumstance, I have always been programming close to hardware - the skill that is in demand once more in recent years in areas like low latency and high-performance concurrency. As for compilers, their ability to improve performance is miles ahead of what it once was, and so is the potential magnitude of the failure when the expected performance boost does not materialize due to a quirk of the language or a peculiarity of the hardware interfering with the programmer's intent. All in all, I found the old habits, if not the old knowledge, relevant again in the modern age of high-performance computing.
What part or parts of the book are your favorite, and why?
Several parts, and the experience of writing them, stand out in my memory. First of all, it's the chapter on designing for performance. So often, performance is considered a feature to be added later. The mantra "do not optimize prematurely" is as widely known as it is misunderstood; its intended meaning is much more nuanced than most programmers realize. The idea that performance targets are as much a part of the original design specification as the feature list often comes as a surprise; if I can teach one thing to the readers of my book, I would want it to be this idea.
Other favorite moments are the ones where I found and presented some minor or innocuous change that has an unexpectedly large effect on performance. Certain compiler optimizations, seemingly trivial changes to memory access, and clever concurrent algorithms all have that element of surprise and even disbelief: "It does WHAT?"
In what ways have you been active in the community?
Mostly in various educational activities, like conference presentations and CppCon Academy classes. Sharing my knowledge and having the knowledge and experience of others shared with me are where I find my role in the C++ community most useful.
What makes this book better than other similar titles?
Obviously, the content, the presentation, and the style! Seriously though, there are several strengths of the book in my mind. First is the emphasis on not just imparting knowledge and information, but explaining how we came to know what we know, and how such knowledge can be re-discovered when the next generations of hardware, languages, and compilers will make the guidelines of today obsolete. In this way, it is a book about learning to learn. Second is the scope, the breadth of it: it is rare to find, in one place, the presentation of the performance effects that originate from the hardware, the compilers, the language features, and the design decisions, and their mutual interactions.
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