Jonathan Blow's new language, Jai, has some control over layout allowing easy switching between array of structs and struct of arrays without having to change the accessing code.
That video briefly mentions the CppCon 2014 talk by Mike Afton, "Data-oriented Design and C++". The talk was great, pretty much lined up with how I think of modern systems (treat RAM like disk: seeks take a long time, but streams will likely be able to maximize CPU usage)
But the questions at the end, and the resistance to these basic ideas, roughly "what about platform portability, programmer productivity, etc."; these questions were a bit shocking to me. Is this not a C++ conference? This was six years ago, so perhaps the machine constraints were not as well known back then, but it really shows how strongly the community culture will influence a language and its capabilities.
I thought he pulled that back out of the language, though with the intent of re implementing it with as a library with the metaprogramming facilities of the language for anyone who wanted it?
I haven't seen the update, but to me that seems a bit silly. This is a pretty fundamental type manipulation, and ideally the compiler would have some understanding of it...
Could you explain? What I meant, I believe Jai is vaporware and gets too much attention. I mean Jai sound exciting until you find out that the download link is missing.
It's still under development, with no public release, but I think it's a bit unfair to call it vapourware, since he has produced plenty of material that demonstrates he has a working compiler and has clearly spent a great deal of time developing it, not just talking about it.
Whether it gets too much attention is debatable. He has some good ideas, imo, worth exploring, although I don't agree with all of his opinions. He has a prominent enough profile that it will likely inspire others to incorporate features from Jai if they are seen to be desirable, even if Jai is not ultimately released. (Personally, I think it will eventually.)
Well, what is your hunch when it will be released? My expectation is eithet never, or there will be a release and it will crumble quickly when people want to do things with it.
Basically right on point with what the GP is saying.