"Zero cost abstraction" to me means a completely "static" abstraction, i.e. there are no runtime mechanisms necessary to implement the abstraction. Your slidin

"Zero cost abstraction" to me means a completely "static" abstraction, i.e. there are no runtime mechanisms necessary to implement the abstraction. Your sliding window is just a series of windows, so there is no reason why it couldn't be compiled in the "most" efficient way. In fact it probably does, just try it out by implementing the sliding_window as an iterable. However there's always this problem with cleverness: It gets harder and harder to read and maintain. Also http://wiki.c2.com/?SufficientlySmartCompiler http://wiki.c2.com/?SufficientlySmartCompiler