An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#1

Post by headalgorithm » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust
jamesmcm.github.io

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#2

Post by byproxy » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

;)

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#3

Post by blovescoffee » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

I've read quite a few articles about DOD. I get how DOD is great but there are reasons OOP is still around (surely?)

I suppose I'm still hung up on, what are the benefits of OOP that I'm missing?

It seems like there are reasons OOP is so ingrained. I can see a couple of reasons that are environmental. For instance, OOP is taught in schools because students are often taught to program before they're taught about computer architecture - thus DOD would be lost on them. It would be a huge barrier to entry to introduce cache hit rates as a design concern when people are just learning what a class is (in the current standard model of CS education).

Still, it feels like there are other practical reasons to keep OOP around. Perhaps OOP is the React Native of design patterns - poor performance but quicker to write and add new members to. It does seem like there are also legitimate concerns about refactorability and extensibility of DOD code. Anyone have any more refined ideas here?

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#4

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

blovescoffee wrote: post #3

I've read quite a few articles about DOD. I get how DOD is great but there are reasons OOP is still around (surely?) I suppose I'm still hung up on, what are the benefits of OOP that I'm missing? It seems like there are reasons OOP is so ingrained. I can see a couple of reasons that are environmental. For instance, OOP is taught in schools because students are often taught to program before they're taught about compu…

I think oop is easier to understand in small examples but gets really inscrutable as your code base grows so you only start questioning oop if you have worked on large code bases.

Also the lack of dod/ecs languages is a problem. I realized the other day that row polymorphism is the type theoretical concept that would make this work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_polymorphism

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#5

Post by hknapp » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

When i first started programming and before i had learned of structs, my intuition led me to organize data with arrays of fields. Turns out, i was on to something.

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#6

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

A lot of people in the Rust community (yours truly including) are trying to work out how to build UI frameworks in this paradigm. It's a really interesting question, if anyone has any good input, I'm alll ears.

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#7

Post by justaguy88 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

byproxy wrote: post #2

see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24447023 ;)

That's not really helpful as there is no discussion on that post

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#8

Post by erichocean » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

blovescoffee wrote: post #3

I've read quite a few articles about DOD. I get how DOD is great but there are reasons OOP is still around (surely?) I suppose I'm still hung up on, what are the benefits of OOP that I'm missing? It seems like there are reasons OOP is so ingrained. I can see a couple of reasons that are environmental. For instance, OOP is taught in schools because students are often taught to program before they're taught about compu…

> It does seem like there are also legitimate concerns about refactorability and extensibility of DOD code.

On the contrary, that's why people adopt DOD designs. It's way easier to add new stuff without breaking existing code/designs in a way that harms them.

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#9

Post by genuine_smiles » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

blovescoffee wrote: post #3

I've read quite a few articles about DOD. I get how DOD is great but there are reasons OOP is still around (surely?) I suppose I'm still hung up on, what are the benefits of OOP that I'm missing? It seems like there are reasons OOP is so ingrained. I can see a couple of reasons that are environmental. For instance, OOP is taught in schools because students are often taught to program before they're taught about compu…

A lot of languages have OOP built into them. If want to use patterns like polymorphism it’s the tool on hand. Associating data with functions is helpful for organization as well.

Re: An Introduction to Data Oriented Design with Rust

#10

Post by cogman10 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

blovescoffee wrote: post #3

I've read quite a few articles about DOD. I get how DOD is great but there are reasons OOP is still around (surely?) I suppose I'm still hung up on, what are the benefits of OOP that I'm missing? It seems like there are reasons OOP is so ingrained. I can see a couple of reasons that are environmental. For instance, OOP is taught in schools because students are often taught to program before they're taught about compu…

DOD generally implies a high level of coupling on the system. That's it's biggest weakness. It also pushes even more data management problems onto programmers which makes it easy to get things wrong.

You take those downsides and you trade them for higher performance.

Now, that doesn't mean that you can't have hybrid systems and get most of the benefits of both worlds. It does, however, mean that you will end up with a more complex system to manage and maintain.

A simple OO system is relatively easy to craft without a whole lot of ceremony. That's the prime benefit of OO.