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Static arrays - when was the last time you used a static array?

What do you mean by “static” exactly? It could be referring to an array that doesn’t change size. Or the contents are read-only. Or do you mean C/C++ static linking? Or something else?

In C, C++ and CUDA I use constant fixed-size arrays with lookup tables of specialized data all the time. I also use small arrays to hold temporary results that need to get first collected, and then sorted or processed together. Seems like very common in C++, especially embedded, game, and GPU programming. I’d love to hear about why static arrays seem uncommon in your world.

Static arrays as in constant fixed sized arrays. With a static array, O(N) is faster than O(LogN) and even some cases O(1) ahem, hashes when N is small. A contiguous cache is king, and even with modern dynamic languages, the generational GC can even be completely bypassed or highly simplified if the JIT learns that memory access is just dependent on offsets.

Simple code runs fast.

See Pike on Complexity - Rule 3: https://www.lysator.liu.se/c/pikestyle.html

I find I use fixed-sized arrays a lot on microcontrollers. You want to avoid the heap (for reliability) and you don't have a lot of RAM, so you must carefully size your fixed-size arrays.

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