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While we wait for this year’s event, we’re featuring videos of some of the 100+ talks from CppCon 2016 for you to enjoy. Here is today’s feature:

std::accumulate: Exploring an Algorithmic Empire

by Ben Deane

(watch on YouTube) (watch on Channel 9)

Summary of the talk:

What is the most powerful algorithm in the STL? In the world? There are many cases to be made. But this talk explores what I think is a pretty good candidate, which C++ calls std::accumulate(). Tucked away in ＜numeric＞, perhaps relatively unregarded when compared with workhorses like std::find_if() and std::partition(); nevertheless, std::accumulate() is in some sense the ur-algorithm on sequences.

Let’s explore the result of looking at code through an accumulate-shaped lens, how tweaking the algorithm for better composability can unlock many more uses, and how it can be further genericized with applications to parallelism, tree structures, and heterogeneous sequences.

std::accumulate(): it’s not just for adding things up!