Static Allocation with Zig
nickmonad.blog
Static Allocation with Zig
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Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#2> All memory must be statically allocated at startup. No memory may be dynamically allocated (or freed and reallocated) after initialization. This avoids unpredictable behavior that can significantly affect performance, and avoids use-after-free. As a second-order effect, it is our experience that this also makes for more efficient, simpler designs that are more performant and easier to maintain and reason about, compared to designs that do not consider all possible memory usage patterns upfront as part of the design.
> TigerStyle
It's baffling that a technique known for 30+ years in the industry have been repackage into "tiger style" or whatever this guru-esque thing this is.
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#3> All memory must be statically allocated at startup. No memory may be dynamically allocated (or freed and reallocated) after initialization. This avoids unpredictable behavior that can significantly affect performance, and avoids use-after-free. As a second-order effect, it is our experience that this also makes for more efficient, simpler designs that are more performant and easier to maintain and reason about, com…
Yep. Those of us who write embedded code for a living call this “writing code.”
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#4[deleted]
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#5> All memory must be statically allocated at startup. No memory may be dynamically allocated (or freed and reallocated) after initialization. This avoids unpredictable behavior that can significantly affect performance, and avoids use-after-free. As a second-order effect, it is our experience that this also makes for more efficient, simpler designs that are more performant and easier to maintain and reason about, com…
Yep. Those of us who write embedded code for a living call this “writing code.”
Author here! That's totally fair. I did learn this is a common technique in the embedded world and I had a whole section in the original draft about how it's not a super well-known technique in the typical "backend web server" world, but I wanted to keep the length of the post down so I cut that out. I think there's a lot we can learn from embedded code, especially around performance.
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#6Related recent post from Tigerbeetle developer: https://matklad.github.io/2025/12/23/static-allocation-compi...
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#7> All memory must be statically allocated at startup. No memory may be dynamically allocated (or freed and reallocated) after initialization. This avoids unpredictable behavior that can significantly affect performance, and avoids use-after-free. As a second-order effect, it is our experience that this also makes for more efficient, simpler designs that are more performant and easier to maintain and reason about, com…
It is known, but not widely used outside of embedded programming. The fact that they’re using it while writing a database when they didn’t need to makes people sit up and notice. So why did they make this conscious choice?
It’s tempting to cut people down to size, but I don’t think it’s warranted here. I think TigerBeetle have created something remarkable and their approach to programming is how they’ve created it.
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#8I'm doing pretty much this exact pattern with NATS right now instead of Redis. Cool to see other people following similar strategies.
The fact that the Zig ecosystem follows the pattern set by the standard library to pass the Allocator interface around makes it super easy to write idiomatic code, and then decide on your allocation strategies at your call site. People have of course been doing this for decades in other languages, but it's not trivial to leverage existing ecosystems like libc while following this pattern, and your callees usually need to know something about the allocation strategy being used (even if only to avoid standard functions that do not follow that allocation strategy).
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#9> All memory must be statically allocated at startup. No memory may be dynamically allocated (or freed and reallocated) after initialization. This avoids unpredictable behavior that can significantly affect performance, and avoids use-after-free. As a second-order effect, it is our experience that this also makes for more efficient, simpler designs that are more performant and easier to maintain and reason about, com…
It seems it's just a part of a doc on style in tigerbeatle, in a similar way to the various "Google Style Guide" for code. These rarely have something new, but document what a particular project or organization does with respect to code style.
Re: Static Allocation with Zig
#10Personally I believe static allocation has pretty huge consequences for theoretical computer science.
It’s the only kind of program that can be actually reasoned about. Also, not exactly Turing complete in classic sense.
Makes my little finitist heart get warm and fuzzy.