Mike Shah :: Running Away From Computation - An Introduction

Presented at Core C 2023 conference. One of the fun and motivating reasons to use the C programming language is the ability to optimize code. One of the best ways to optimize code is to avoid any computation in the first place! In this talk, we are going to learn how to approach the C programming language, thinking about compile-time computation (e.g. constexpr, static_assert, and template meta-programming) and some other tricks to avoid computation at run-time (e.g. short-circuit evaluation, caching, and lazy evaluation). In this talk, participants will learn how these techniques improve performance (with measurements using the perf profiler), as well as learn how these techniques also make C a safer programming language. This talk is targeted towards beginner to intermediate range C programmers. ----- Mike Shah I am currently an Associate Teaching Professor at Northeastern University in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. My primary teaching interests are in computer systems, computer graphics, and software engineering. My research interests are related to performance engineering (dynamic analysis), software visualization, and computer graphics. Along with teaching and research work, I have juggled occasional consulting work as a 3D Senior Graphics Engineer in C .