CppCon 2016: Nicholas Ormrod “The strange details of std::string at Facebook"

Why HN readers recommended it

HN returns to it as the go-to talk on string internals, small string packing and why small percentage optimizations matter at scale.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

CppCon

Topic

c++ string optimization

Format

talk

Level

advanced

HN recommenders in dataset

4

HN mentions in dataset

11

Recommendation years in dataset

2018–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• I think this is the talk you're referring to. If not, it's still definitely worth a watch: [VIDEO]

• The FAANGS certainly have people doing this kind of work. For example, Andrei Alexandrescu has a bunch of keynote talks at CPPCon where he talks about 1-4% speed optimisations he makes to the std library at Facebook. [LINK] I also like the talk by Nicholas …

• Yes, there are really cool packing techniques. See this talk for example: [VIDEO] I don't include the null-terminator because I use this type in my own environment where I never use null-terminated strings so there is no need for it.