Andrei Alexandrescu
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Tudor Andrei Cristian Alexandrescu<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (born 1969) is a Romanian-American programmer and author specializing in the programming languages C++ and D.<ref name="facebook.d"/> He is especially known for his pioneering work on policy-based design implemented via template metaprogramming. These ideas are articulated in his book Modern C++ Design and were first implemented in his programming library, Loki. He also implemented the move constructors concept in his library MOJO.<ref name="movectors">Template:Cite magazine</ref> He contributed to the C/C++ Users Journal under the byline "Generic<Programming>".
He became an American citizen in August 2014.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Education and career
Alexandrescu received a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic University of Bucharest (Universitatea Politehnica din București) in July 1994.<ref name="resume">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite conference</ref>
In September 1998, his first article was published in the C/C++ Users Journal. From April 1999 until February 2000, he was a program manager for Netzip, Inc. When the company was acquired by RealNetworks, Inc., he served there as a development manager from February 2000 through September 2001.<ref name="resume"/>
In 2001, Alexandrescu released the book Modern C++ Design, reviewed as one of the five most important C++ books by C++ expert Scott Meyers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 2003, Alexandrescu earned a Master of Science (M.S.), and in 2009, a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in computer science from the University of Washington.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Computer Science & Engineering, Recent Ph.D. Graduates (Summer 2009). mark University of Washington.</ref>
In 2006, Alexandrescu began assisting Walter Bright in developing the D programming language.<ref name="bio">Template:Cite web</ref> In May 2010, he released a book titled The D Programming Language.
From 2010–2014, Alexandrescu, Herb Sutter, and Scott Meyers ran a small annual technical conference named C++ and Beyond.
Alexandrescu worked as a research scientist at Facebook for over 5 years, before leaving the firm in August 2015 to focus on developing the D language.<ref name="fbdeparture">Template:Cite web</ref>
In January 2022, Alexandrescu began working at Nvidia as a Principal Research Scientist.<ref name="LinkedIn">Template:Cite web</ref>
Contributions
The D programming language
Along with Walter Bright, Alexandrescu has been one of the two main designers of the D language, and the main maintainer of the standard library Phobos from 2007–2019. He is the founder of the D Language Foundation. His contributions include the module ranges. He is the author of The D Programming Language book.
Expected
Expected is a template class for C++ which is on the C++ Standards track.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Alexandrescu proposes<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Expected<T> as a class for use as a return value which contains either a T or the exception preventing its creation, which is an improvement over use of either return codes or exceptions exclusively. Expected can be thought of as a restriction of sum (union) types or algebraic data types in various languages, e.g., Hope, or the more recent Haskell and Gallina; or of the error handling mechanism of Google's Go, or the Result type in Rust.
He explains the benefits of Expected<T> as:
- Associates errors with computational goals
- Naturally allows multiple exceptions in flight
- Switch between "error handling" and "exception throwing" styles
- Teleportation possible across thread boundaries, across nothrow subsystem boundaries and across time (save now, throw later)
- Collect, group, combine exceptions
Example
For example, instead of any of the following common function prototypes:
<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp"> int parseInt(const string&); // Returns 0 on error and sets errno. </syntaxhighlight>
or
<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp"> int parseInt(const string&); // Throws invalid_input or overflow </syntaxhighlight>
he proposes the following:
<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp"> Expected<int> parseInt(const string&); // Returns an expected int: either an int or an exception </syntaxhighlight>
Scope guard
From 2000<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> onwards, Alexandrescu has advocated and popularized the scope guard idiom. He has introduced it as a language construct in D.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It has been implemented by others in many other languages.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Bibliography
References
External links
- Template:Official website
- Older website – Has links to downloadable Loki libraries for various compilers
- Template:In lang Interviu MONEY.ro: Facebook face angajări în România, 1 March 2010