I agree that the x32 ABI is probably a technological dead end, but I don't agree with "just" use a custom heap. I tried in C++ and it's not easy. You lose a l

I agree that the x32 ABI is probably a technological dead end, but I don't agree with "just" use a custom heap. I tried in C++ and it's not easy. You lose a lot of type safety and you have to basically rewrite every line of your program. I mentioned the Zig compiler here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33797368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33797368 Another program I remember that uses small integers instead of pointers is the Sorbet type checker (not coincidentally it also has a fine-grained AST code representation): https://blog.nelhage.com/post/why-sorbet-is-fast/ https://blog.nelhage.com/post/why-sorbet-is-fast/ I peeked at the code awhile back, and it's not really idiomatic C++. It's obviously doable but you have to architect the program from the start for it -- it's not feasible to retrofit this technique onto existing software.