A coding philosophy focused on safety, performance, and developer experience.

Over the past two years, the United States Government has been issuing warnings about memory-unsafe programming languages with increasing urgency.

Vale's memory safety strategy uses generational references to manage memory without relying on traditional methods like garbage collection. Each reference stores a "generation" ID, and before accessing an object, a check ensures the ID matches the object's current generation. This approach allows for efficient memory management while maintaining safety, reducing overhead significantly compared to other methods.

A memory allocator is software that manages dynamic memory allocation in programs, providing functions like malloc(), free(), and realloc(). This particular allocator aims to minimize memory wastage and improve efficiency, and it is widely used in various systems, including Linux. It employs techniques like coalescing freed chunks and supports memory mapping to enhance performance and reduce fragmentation.

Memory-mapped files allow programs to access disk data larger than available memory. By using mmap in Go, you can map a file directly into memory for easier manipulation. Virtual memory techniques, like mmap, can help solve memory limitations in handling large files efficiently.

Databases use memory-mapped files like mmap to handle data on disk larger than available memory. Examples include SQLite, LevelDB, Lucene, LMDB, and MongoDB. By understanding how mmap is used, we can grasp how databases efficiently read and write data from disk.

Kelly discusses the challenges of memory-mapped files and cloud storage in response to a comment about space reservation in Voron. Cloud providers may allocate more space than needed, leading to unexpected charges and unreliable data handling. Testing reveals issues with sparse files and memory mapping in cloud scenarios, highlighting the importance of understanding storage limitations.

Implementing a file pager in Zig involves delaying disk writes until a threshold is reached. Two eviction strategies include least recently used and least frequently used models. Prioritizing pages based on usage can help optimize performance.

The text discusses using 'index-handles' instead of raw or smart pointers for memory management in C and C++. It suggests centralizing memory management into systems, grouping items into arrays, and converting handles to pointers only when necessary. By following specific rules, such as not storing pointers and using handle-to-pointer conversion, memory safety and efficient memory usage can be maintained.

C is often considered a low-level language, but this article argues that it is not. The author explains that vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown occurred because processor architects were trying to build fast processors that exposed the same abstract machine as a PDP-11, which C programmers believe is close to the underlying hardware. However, the reality is that C code runs on a complex compiler that performs intricate transformations to achieve the desired performance. The article also discusses how C's memory model and optimizations make it difficult to understand and can lead to undefined behavior. The author suggests that instead of trying to make C code fast, it may be time to explore programming models on processors designed for speed.

TigerBeetle, a database written in Zig, does not allocate memory dynamically after startup. It uses static memory allocation for all data structures, avoiding performance issues and use-after-free bugs. This approach allows for better predictability, easier handling of overload, and efficient resource management.

The text discusses limitations of the Rust borrow checker and proposes solutions for creating references that borrow from specific subsets of a type. Two approaches, "View types" and "Reference views," are explored to address these limitations and provide more flexibility in borrowing subsets of fields with different lifetimes and mutability. The discussion includes examples, subtyping implications, monomorphization considerations, and the need to update Rust's aliasing model to accommodate view references accessing discontiguous memory regions.

The Rustonomicon is a book for understanding Unsafe Rust programming details. It complements The Rust Programming Language by delving into combining language pieces and potential issues. The book covers topics like (un)safety, creating safe abstractions with unsafe primitives, and working with memory, but does not provide exhaustive API details.

The text discusses the arena allocator as an alternative to traditional manual memory management in C, addressing issues with malloc and free. The arena allocator simplifies memory allocation and deallocation by grouping lifetimes together in a single block of memory. It provides a more efficient and manageable way to handle memory usage in codebases compared to the malloc and free approach.

The text discusses improvements to Rust's borrow checker to align better with its core design ethos of mutation xor sharing. These changes aim to make Rust code patterns feel more intuitive and work seamlessly with the borrow checker's rules. The proposed enhancements include features like conditional return references, view types, and addressing phased initialization issues.

The Garbage Collection Handbook is a comprehensive guide on automatic memory management, covering modern techniques and challenges faced by programmers. This second edition updates the handbook with insights from over 60 years of research and development in the field. It is essential reading for programmers looking to understand and navigate the complexities of garbage collection in modern programming languages.