Sebastian Mestre's Algorithmic Adventures

I am working on a small project that involves a bunch of geometry algorithms. Since it's something I'm doing for fun, I'm rolling my own implementations of every algorithm I use, in modern C++. Right now, I needed a convex hull algorithm that was going to be used for a small amount of vertices (think up to 30 or so). A convex hull is the smallest convex polygon that contains every point in a set. You can think of it as the shape drawn by sticking a bunch of nails to a piece of wood and then releasing a rubber band around them. I don't have a picture of that but, in a more abstact setting, it looks like this: There are a few different algorithms with different performance characteristics that will compute the convex hull for us. The two major ones are The Jarvis March (a very simple O(N^2)), the Graham Scan (more complicated, O(NlogN)). Since my use case involves very few vertices, I went with the Jarvis March. The Jarvis March This is the algorith...

Template meta programming has been a mainstay in C++ for years. It provides a system for compile-time polymorphism and generic programming with capabilities not present in many other languages, enriching the language and bringing new opportunities for expressiveness to the table. Why doesn't the C language have such capabilities? Well, besides the fact that C++'s templates were added to the language years after C and C++ stopped resembling each other (at least in the common coding styles of each language), the reality is that it does. Sort of. Let me show you what I mean. The C Preprocessor Enter, the C preprocessor. For many, a glorified find-and-replace engine; but in reality it hides great opportunities for those looking to expand their frontiers. Let's go over the basics first, and then we'll take a look at the true power of the C preprocessor. Object-like macros This is how the GNU Foundation refers to the simplest form of define directive [1] . These con...