alt Hacker NewsThis reminds me how you can save a bunch of bytes just by making sure your structs are aligned. In go for example:
type Wasteful struct {
a int16
b int
c byte
}
type Aligned struct {
b int
a int16
c byte
}
Rust does that automatically unless you switch to the C layout.
In langages that don’t there’s a tension between memory use and human readability / consistency of the layout.
There are also other domains which can be affected e.g. databases, it’s a concern / issue when using postgres for instance as it uses aligned columns and stores them in schema order.