Sy Brand

Sy Brand

Programming blog and CV for Sy Brand, AKA TartanLlama. Expect C++ template metaprogramming.

About Me

I am a C++ enthusiast, currently writing toolchains and standards for heterogeneous systems. My CV is available here.

I am from Edinburgh, Scotland, which is known for its castle, history, and unpredictable weather. I studied Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, graduating with a 1st class BSc (Hons) in 2013.

I have an unhealthy love of template metaprogramming and the dark corners of C++. This blog is intended to be an outlet for discoveries and musings on C++ and any other tools which interest me.

I am active in various community areas:
  • Co-organiser of Edinburgh C++ Meetup
  • Gold C++ badge holder on Stack Overflow
  • C++ Standards proposals author
  • Administrator of the CppLang Slack channel

Meeting C++ 2017 Talk

I gave a talk entitled "How C++ Debuggers Work" on the main track of Meeting C++ 2017.

Nov 2017

Edinburgh Rust Meetup Talk

I gave a talk entitled "How Rust Gets Polymorphism Right" at the Edinburgh Rust Meetup. As of Nov 2017 it has 5000 views and was on the front page of Hacker News.

Oct 2017

Blog hit 100,000 views

Oct 2017

Contributed to Compiler Explorer

I wrote the Haskell mode and Clang AST viewer for Matt Godbolt's Compiler Explorer.

Jun 2017

Successful EU Mid-Project Review for LPGPU2

I lead Codeplay's team for the LPGPU2 H2020 project to a successful review at the European Union.

Jun 2017

Co-organiser of C++ Edinburgh

I started to help organise the C++ Edinburgh User Group.

Jul 2016-present

HSA Debugger and v1.1 Specs Released

I was the spec editor for the runtime and tools groups, and wrote the profiling APIs. I also ported LLDB to AMD's HSA implementation.

Jun 2016

Software Engineer at Codeplay

Heterogeneous compiler and debugger work, mostly based on LLVM, Clang and LLDB. Also contributing to various standards bodies.

July 2013-present

BSc (Hons) 1st Class

Graduated from the University of St Andrews with a 1st class BSc in Computer Science.

June 2013

Internship at eeGeo

Worked on a 3D maps platform. I used Hadoop to port ordinance survey data for the whole of Britain to the platform, and wrote a Lunar Lander game using the SDK.

June-Sept 2012

Internship at IBM

Worked on the build team, implementing a build archival system, setting up automated testing, providing support for the developers.

June-Sept 2011