C++ template duck-typing vs pure virtual base class inheritance

Question

Which are the guidelines for choosing between template duck-typing and pure virtual base class inheritance? Examples:

// templates
class duck {
    void sing() { std::cout << "quack\n"; }
};

template<typename bird>
void somefunc(const bird& b) {
    b.sing();
}

// pure virtual base class
class bird {
    virtual void sing() = 0;
};

class duck : public bird {
    void sing() { std::cout << "quack\n"; }
}

void somefunc(const bird& b) {
    b.sing();
}

Answer 1

With template duck-typing, you are doing static polymorphism. Thus, you cannot do things like

std::vector<bird*> birds;
birds.push_back(new duck());

However, since you are relying on compile time typing, you are a little more efficient (no virtual call implies no dynamic dispatch (base on the dynamic type)).

Answer 2

If having the "template nature" of things propagate widely is OK with you, templates ("compile-time duck typing") can give you blazing speed (avoiding the "level of indirection" that's implicit in a virtual-function call) though maybe at some cost in memory footprint (in theory, good C++ implementations could avoid that memory overhead related to templates, but I don't feel very confident that such high-quality compilers will necessarily be available on all platforms where you need to port;-). So, at least pragmatically, it's something of a speed/memory trade-off. If the operations you're doing are so super-slow as I/O, then maybe the relatively tiny speed gain from avoiding a virtual call isn't really material to your use case.