[arconis987]

The generational index idea was exactly what I needed for a search index project I’ve been working on. Makes it much easier to safely insert and delete from a memory arena.

Also, fascinating that Rust’s borrow checker sort of encourages you over time to adopt an entity component system architecture instead of a naive OO architecture.

[apitman]

I had a very interesting experience as a Rust newbie developing a genetic algorithm simulation[0]. I started with my mental model of how to represent things, and I definitely felt like the borrow checker pushed me to adopt more ECS principles.

[0] https://github.com/anderspitman/battle_beetles

[faitswulff]

> Also, fascinating that Rust’s borrow checker sort of encourages you over time to adopt an entity component system architecture instead of a naive OO architecture.

Is this true outside of gamedev contexts?

[bluejekyll]

I'm not familiar with the parent comment, but after seeing this talk at RustConf, I've been strongly considering this pattern as a better way of storing associated data to an entity than OO design, especially in regards to high-scale systems where portions of an Entity might be stored across different datastores.

The idea of operating on individual components of an entity is very compelling in those cases, it's not even novel. We often have done this by pulling data out of datastores in parallel array like requests. The difference with this model is that it creates an elegant interface over the data for an entity that isn't a bastardized version of OO, instead just the data and structures you need present in the context in which your working.

As a non-gamedev, I found this really compelling.

[unrealhoang]

Yes, for example UI programming. Since Rust makes none-linear data flow very inconvenient (Rc and RefCell), people often try to find data-oriented solution like ECS instead.