4. Zero-overhead abstractions - How to write fast, maintainable code

While the last chapter was all about the low-level details of memory, in this chapter we will take a more high-level look at systems programming and the abstractions that modern systems programming languages offer to write faster, more robust code with greater ease. Many of the abstractions that we will learn about in this chapter come from the domain of functional programming and have found their way into modern programming languages, not only for systems programming but application programming as well. What sets systems programming languages apart from other languages is the focus on zero-overhead abstractions, as we already saw in the previous chapter. To this end, we will not only learn about some useful abstractions such as optional types and iterators in this chapter, but we will also learn how they work under the hood and what enables these abstractions to be efficient.

Here is the roadmap for this chapter:

• 4.1. Product types, sum types, and the Option type
• 4.2. Iterators
• 4.3. Algorithms