David "Dave" Musser is a professor emeritus of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (; RPI) is a private university, private research university in Troy, New York, United States. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere. It was establishe ...

Troy, New York Troy is a city in and the county seat of Rensselaer County, New York, United States. It is located on the western edge of the county, on the eastern bank of the Hudson River just northeast of the capital city of Albany, New York, Albany. At the ...

, United States. He is known for his work in

generic programming Generic programming is a style of computer programming in which algorithms are written in terms of data types ''to-be-specified-later'' that are then ''instantiated'' when needed for specific types provided as parameters. This approach, pioneer ...

, particularly as applied to C++, and his collaboration with Alexander Stepanov. Their work together includes coining the term "generic programming" in , and led to the creation of the C++

Standard Template Library The Standard Template Library (STL) is a software library originally designed by Alexander Stepanov for the C++ programming language that influenced many parts of the C++ Standard Library. It provides four components called ''algorithms'', '' ...

(STL). In , he developed the

sorting algorithm In computer science, a sorting algorithm is an algorithm that puts elements of a List (computing), list into an Total order, order. The most frequently used orders are numerical order and lexicographical order, and either ascending or descending ...

called

introsort Introsort or introspective sort is a hybrid sorting algorithm that provides both fast average performance and (asymptotically) optimal worst-case performance. It begins with quicksort, it switches to heapsort when the recursion depth exceeds a l ...

(also known as introspective sort), and the related

selection algorithm In computer science, a selection algorithm is an algorithm for finding the kth smallest value in a collection of ordered values, such as numbers. The value that it finds is called the order statistic. Selection includes as special cases the p ...

called

introselect In computer science, introselect (short for "introspective selection") is a selection algorithm that is a hybrid of quickselect and median of medians which has fast average performance and optimal worst-case performance. Introselect is related ...

, to provide algorithms that are both efficient and have optimal worst-case performance, for use in the STL.Generic Algorithms
, David Musser In 2007 he retired from Rensselaer.

Selected publications

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References

External links

David Musser's home page
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Computer scientists Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute faculty {{compu-scientist-stub