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

What people said

def-pri-pub · 2026-03 · Recommendation

You'd be surprised how it actually is worth the effort, even just a 1% improvement. If you have the time, this is a great talk to listen to: [VIDEO] For a little toy ray tracer, it is pretty measly. But for a larger corporation (with a professional project) a 4% speed improvement can mean MASSIVE cost savings. Some of these tiny improvements can also have a cascading effect. Imagining finding a +4%, a +2% somewhere else, +3% in neighboring code, and a bunch of +1%s here and there. Eventually you'll have built up something that is 15-20% faster. Down the road you'll come across those optimizations which can yield the big results too (e.g. the +25%).

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D4ckard · 2024-12 · Recommendation

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.

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jiggawatts · 2024-03 · Recommendation

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 Ormrod “The strange details of std::string at Facebook": [VIDEO]

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