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C++ under the hood – range-based for loops

This may be your bread and butter but today I fell into a rabbit hole of optimization questions and found a few things that I wanted to share with you. As someone who did Assembly programming “back in the days” (haven’t touched it in a while now) I am always very distrustful of modern, ease-of-use, generalizations and high(er)-level approaches to foundational concepts. As such whenever presented with something like:

std::vector<int> a = {6, 2, 3, 8, 1, 4};

If I want to go about and get the lowest value I’d typically avoid doing:

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Fonte

This is currently a Portuguese only post, as its content, a cyberpunk themed short story, was created during a writing event – “It’s Alive” by Imaginauta (you are awesome) in Lisbon, with the purpose of writing a short story of speculative fiction in 4 hours or less. This was my shot at it and I truly hope you enjoy it.

Fonte

A Noite das Mil Almas era já um acontecimento habitual das elites da alta sociedade runner de Santa Mónica.

As suas vestes predominantemente negras exalavam os ecos de um saudosismo retro-noir, pautadas pelos tons pastéis ocasionais ou pelos gritos de neon emergente, oscilando na característica (não) binária de quem as usava em plena ostentação.

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On Solitude and Loneliness

Some months back, I asked the following question on my social networks:

“For those of you who, more often than not, feel lonely, what are the main causes for that same feeling?“

Needless to say I’m one of those people. 

If I look back, really back, I feel I’ve always felt lonely throughout my life. I grew up under an overprotective  household, where I couldn’t really go out and play, and the only real contact with friends were the very few I was fortunate enough to have come over (I’m such a walking and talking stereotype for a geek software engineer).

All this made me want to create stories, narratives, epic adventures of my own fantasy worlds, as they were my only escape from a very lonely existence. I could be whatever I wanted and do just that. I could be free from the shackles of my incarcerated upbringing.

Gosh, that was harsh…

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Crossroads

Hey, it’s me again!

It’s been a while. Almost a lifetime (yet another, *sigh*).

Since I last wrote here, so many thinks came to pass… World’s gone crazy with the Pandemic, people’s lives got set upside-down, we lost relatives, friends and a lot of things we hold most dear. We had to learn how to live again, how to work, and how to live through the ordeal of being away from those that we love.

As I write this text, everything seems to be calming down (crossing fingers here). Vaccines are being distributed, we have somewhat adapted to the hardship and are getting our lives back, one socially-distanced get-together after the other (now that’s a tough concept).

So what’s going on right now?

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On People and Feelings

This is a very personal post. You have been warned.

Out at the train tracks
I dream of escape
But a song comes onto my iPod
And I realize it’s getting late
And I can’t take the staring
And the sympathy
And I don’t like the questions “How do you feel?”
“How’s it going in school?”
And “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Porcupine Tree – Way out of Here

We are an odd species, and surely I cannot put enough emphasis on that remark so that it really illustrates the feeling I am trying to convey.

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On Letting Go

We all like to take a few things for granted.

If we consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there are plenty of things we all love to take for granted, from things most of us we in the Western hemisphere usually have at our disposal, like a ceiling to sleep under, running drinkable water and food for the day, or even more complex endeavours like a good job or friends we can rely on.

So what happens when those constructs are put to test? How do we feel when we need to let go of something we hold most dear?

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Today Was Hard (or how I struggle with my own impatience)

Wake, shower, drive, wait in line, wait some more, someone telling me I stood in line for nothing for the past hour, drive, walk, wait, talk, wait some more…

I think you get the picture.

This is how my morning sounded like. It kind of went on until slightly past noon.

“So what?” You may wonder. Indeed, doesn’t sound much. In fact, I should be able to deal with this easily, just letting go of all of the unwanted feelings and rise above the low-orbiting, heavy weights that push my mood to the ground. Did I mention it also rained?

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