By Tina Ulbrich
Generic programming is a technique where functions and data structures are defined as general as possible. The goal is that they work with different data types and therefore are reusable.
In C++ generic functions and data structures are typically realized by using templates.
Templates are a great tool for generic programming but they come with their own set of challenges. They can be hard to read/write and influence compile times negatively. And sometimes they are even too generic. C++20’s concepts can help with that but I want to show how you can be generic in your code without writing your own templates.
To do that, we will explore some C++17 and C++20 features from the standard library, like std::span, std::variant and std::any. I will explain what they are, where they are useful and how to use them.
I will also show some features you can find in other libraries, e.g. GSL.
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