Mir Algorithm preview: the new ndslice, dlang Iterators, fast generics

[Ilya Yaroshenko via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 15:33:25 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> On Tuesday, 7 February 2017 at 16:18:20 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko 
> wrote:
>>
>> Feedback is welcome!
>>
>
> I don't have time right now to play around with it, but I 
> looked through the documentation. Here are my comments:
>
> 1) I would consider
> http://docs.algorithm.dlang.io/latest/mir_ndslice.html
> to be the first thing that anyone looks at when they think 
> about mir ndslice. I think it's pretty good, but there's always 
> room for some improvements, such as
>
> a) The extent of the compatibility between D's standard library 
> and mir (such as what you wrote in the post above)
> b) Some of your high level explanation for the motivation for 
> recent changes, such as iterators, 
> universal/canonical/contigous. I.e., something along the lines 
> of ndslice is so powerful it can do all these different things.
>
> 2) The explanation of the difference between universal, 
> canonical, and contiguous is in
> http://docs.algorithm.dlang.io/latest/mir_ndslice_slice.html#.Slice
> It should be referenced in functions like 
> Universal/Canonical/Contigous/universal/canonical.
>
> 3) mir.ndslice.topology has universal, canonical, 
> assumeCanonical, and assumeContiguous. Why no contiguous or 
> assumeUniversal?
>
> 4) It looks like some of the functions from std.algorithm, like 
> map, are now in mir.ndslice.topology instead of 
> mir.ndslice.algorithm. You might include more detailed 
> explanations at the top of the documentation of topology and 
> algorithm for why the modules are split up this way.
>
> Keep up the good work.

1, 2, 4 Agreed. I wonder if ndslice (any) is used by companies, 
if so, i can invest more my time to it. Will post a questionary 
in announce.

3) contiguous and canonical can be always safely converted to 
universal. Plus, contiguous can be always safely converted to 
canonical.

Safe: contiguous -> canonical -> universal
Unsafe (has assume prefix)  universal -> canonical -> contiguous

The ndslice composes all kind of random access ranges you may 
have in real life with one interface, one declaration. And this 
is faster to develop (2-10 times less LOC), compile, and execute 
because of implementation techniques. In addition, it is 
multidimensional. bitwise, zip, map are good examples to compare 
Mir and Phobos.