alt Hacker NewsDoes anyone reading this have links to people who have written specifically about a C++ ownership model that rejects the smart_ptr/RAII/friends model in favor of an ownership model that embraces bulk allocations, arenas, freelists, etc? I know there are groups of highly productive programmers that feel the traditional C++ ownership model is hot garbage, and I'd love a resource that puts down specific arguments against it, but I've never come across one myself.
Edit: clarity
Replies
May be interested in https://floooh.github.io/2018/06/17/handles-vs-pointers.html
If you have requirements for high performance then the traditional C++ "ownership model" (I would say a better description is "ownership strategy") is definitely "slow". It's pretty "safe" in that you usually aren't going to leak a bunch with it but bull allocations, arenas, and freelists are all potentially faster. And you wouldn't use them if they were slower since they're (usually) more to deal with.
But even in software using these strategies, they probably will be using different ownership strategies in different parts of the code. Once you're writing high performance code, you will use specific strategies that give you the best results. But it's completey domain specific.
Yes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xt1KNDmOYqA
Title: “ Casey Muratori | Smart-Pointers, RAII, ZII? Becoming an N+2 programmer”
What makes you think that RAII- and arena-based strategies are in tension with one another? RAII and smart pointers are more related to the ownership and resource management model. Allocating items in bulk or from arenas is more about where the underlying resources and/or memory come from. These concepts can certainly be used in tandem. What is the substance of the argument that RAII, etc. are "hot garbage?"
Those types of allocation technique were common back in the day for efficiency reasons, maybe still relevant for things like embedded programming where you need to be more careful about memory usage and timing, but I would say that nowadays for normal application usage you are better off using smart pointers.
It's not a matter of one being strictly better than the other, but rather about using the right tool for the job.
> explicitly rejects the smart_ptr/RAII/friends model in favor of bulk allocations, arenas, freelists, etc?
These aren't mutually exclusive; you can use the former to manage the latter, after all.
> I know there are groups of highly productive programmers that feel the traditional C++ ownership model is hot garbage
I'm not aware of links off the top of my head, but I can try to summarize the argument.
From my understanding, the argument against RAII/etc. has more to do with the mindset it supposedly encourages more than the concept itself - that RAII and friends makes it easy to think more in terms of individual objects/elements/etc. instead of batches/groups, and as a result programmers tend to follow the easy path which results in less performant/more complex code. By not providing such a feature, so the argument goes, programmers no longer have access to a feature which makes less-efficient programming patterns easy and so batched/grouped management of resources becomes more visible as an alternative.
Such a model likely would not be referred to as "ownership". This is a relatively recent metaphor for memory management that came well after the concepts you mentioned. The fact that such a metaphor is core to rust's memory model is no coincidence.
I'm interested in the same! There are plenty of resources for C[1][2]. I just looked into my old notes and found a post for C++[3].
[1] https://btmc.substack.com/p/memory-unsafety-is-an-attitude-p...
[2] https://www.gingerbill.org/series/memory-allocation-strategi...
[3] https://dmitrysoshnikov.com/compilers/writing-a-pool-allocat...