Love them or hate them, loops (either iterative or recursive) are an important part of writing production-quality code in almost every programming language. Unfortunately, if poorly constructed, these important control-flow constructs can leave a programmer with messy code that's hard to read and harder to debug. There has to be a better way! There is, and that involves iterators! With built-in support in the majority of modern languages, iterators offer programmers a convenient abstraction over loops that can lead to cleaner and more efficient code. This talk will provide an overview of what iterators are, demonstrate how they're present in five popular programming languages, and try to draw out the common concepts that can be applied universally. After this talk, attendees will be able to identify iterators, name and explain five of the most common built-in iterators, understand the components necessary to build an iterator, and be exposed to the benefits of iterator combinators.

Audience: Beginner to Intermediate Programmers, Most Languages
Technical Requirements: Presentation requires screen share or projector and web access
Duration: The presentation has a 10-15min version and a 45-min version
First Delivered: April 25, 2023 as a Lighting Talk