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No, the point wasn't a scenario. The point was to stop focussing on individual allocation-deallocation and start thinking about the data transformation pipeline

No, the point wasn't a scenario. The point was to stop focussing on individual allocation-deallocation and start thinking about the data transformation pipeline. And every program is a data transformer — because data transformation is all a computer does or can possibly do. When one starts thinking in terms of data transformation pipeline, and start to relate lifetime of data with the lifetime of various phases of that pipeline, then one stops worrying about individual "objects" and start thinking in terms of aggregates. Suddenly, there is no need to track the ownership or size for each object, because those properties are now shared with the same (or isomorphic) properties of the phases of pipeline itself. As long as the position in the pipeline is tracked for (e.g., the call stack), all other lifetimes will automatically be tracked.

viraptor 5y ago
I get the idea you're describing and use it for various purposes. But I don't agree "there is no need to track the ownership or size for each object". You can offload some of that thinking to the arenas, the same way you'd do it with GC, sure. But you can't just ignore ownership - sure request context is owned by the arena - but do you need to copy the values you pass to logging? do you need to wait for log flush before destroying request context? What about the more common cached data / process state? Arenas simplify the processing just like GC but they're not magic and don't solve everything.
- HexDecOctBin 5y ago
  Arenas are just one tool amongst many; I am not talking about some specific magic tool, but about software architecture itself. Please read this other reply I made in the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26938577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26938577 EDIT: And about data sharing (with logging, etc.), that's part of the data pipeline too. So yes, your aggregation mechanism will take it into account. These are not two separate problems, irritatingly coupled due to reality; these are two parts of the same problem.

viraptor 5y ago

I get the idea you're describing and use it for various purposes. But I don't agree "there is no need to track the ownership or size for each object". You can offload some of that thinking to the arenas, the same way you'd do it with GC, sure. But you can't just ignore ownership - sure request context is owned by the arena - but do you need to copy the values you pass to logging? do you need to wait for log flush before destroying request context? What about the more common cached data / process state? Arenas simplify the processing just like GC but they're not magic and don't solve everything.

HexDecOctBin 5y ago
Arenas are just one tool amongst many; I am not talking about some specific magic tool, but about software architecture itself. Please read this other reply I made in the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26938577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26938577 EDIT: And about data sharing (with logging, etc.), that's part of the data pipeline too. So yes, your aggregation mechanism will take it into account. These are not two separate problems, irritatingly coupled due to reality; these are two parts of the same problem.