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Comment by henry_bone | Hacker News Reader

Is this true for games? I read an article[1] some years ago that pointed out the OO design (with C++ in this case) was bad for performance due to the data not being arranged in a particularly cache-friendly way.

[1] http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/OO_programming/_pdf/Pitfal...

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Depends on the problem domain. See the posts on Wizards and warriors:

https://ericlippert.com/2015/04/27/wizards-and-warriors-part...

For card games, OOP is very well-suited (so to speak).

"Easier to understand" and "performant" are different axes.

There is a fantastic GDC video about Blizzard's use of ECS in Overwatch and how it made it far easier to understand the system due to all of the interacting subsystems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3aieHjyNvw

It's funny because a few years ago I read about how the developers of a game from the same studio -- specifically StarCraft -- ran into the exact same problems I did when trying to write a game in the then-common "bag of subclassed game objects framework" in the 90s. To this day I thank the gods that I chose ECS for my latest game because it has made changes, bugfixes, and extensions of functionality so much easier. To say nothing of more data-driven.

Some day I believe that when you think for performance your brain gets things faster because it's not potential benefits or stylistic argument. It's raw perf and everybody seeks that (not at the expense of tech debt ofc.)

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