I disagree that its straightforward in C. C is built around pointers, but the bitmasked array uses a completely different kind of pointer. IE you can't just do

I disagree that its straightforward in C. C is built around pointers, but the bitmasked array uses a completely different kind of pointer. IE you can't just do n->n.num_children++; n->children[c] = (art_node*)child; You have to do: __m128i cmp; // Compare the key to all 16 stored keys cmp = _mm_cmplt_epi8(_mm_set1_epi8(c), _mm_loadu_si128((__m128i*)n->keys)); // Use a mask to ignore children that don't exist unsigned bitfield = _mm_movemask_epi8(cmp) & mask; And that's all CPU-specific. I'm not saying it can't be done, but rather the tools are a poor fit for the problem. Have you tried to build this data structure? Can you link to the code? I'd love to see what a clean, high-level, understandable example would look like. > Also we are long in a world where computers are needed to program computers. Yes you're correct about this. I just think its headed even further in this direction. Languages like C++ and Rust are designed to give the programmer control, but the platforms we're programming for seemed to designed to be impossible to understand. If I were tasked with building data structures like this I would really want some tools to help me feel confident the code was correct.