As people occasionally re-discover, object-oriented data structures are not always very efficient. A recurring problem is how objects are usually implemented by assuming that logical relatedness must translate to physical proximity.

How mis-guided.

In Fortran, collections of structs were often simulated by allocating arrays for each element, and indexing across multiple arrays to access struct fields. Somehow, we seem to have forgotten about the performance benefits that can give. I'll be even bolder and state that we're squandering huge amounts of performance by insisting on placing all fields of an object in adjacent memory slots.

Maybe one day others will see the light and figure out what Metakit and Vlerq are all about...

Update: See a related paper by Steve Johnson. Thx Andreas Kupries for the reference.