Lambda the Ultimate

The gaming studio Electronic Arts maintains their own version of the Standard Template Library. Despite the fact this is old news, I checked the LtU Archives and the new site, and there is no mention of EASTL anywhere. There are quite a few good blog posts about EASTL on the Internet, as well as the the following paper, EASTL -- Electronic Arts Standard Template Library by Paul Pedriana:

Gaming platforms and game designs place requirements on game software which differ from requirements of other platforms. Most significantly, game software requires large amounts of memory but has a limited amount to work with. Gaming software is also faced with other limitations such as weaker processor caches, weaker CPUs, and non-default memory alignment requirements. A result of this is that game software needs to be careful with its use of memory and the CPU. The C++ standard library's containers, iterators, and algorithms are potentially useful for a variety of game programming needs. However, weaknesses and omissions of the standard library prevent it from being ideal for high performance game software. Foremost among these weaknesses is the allocator model. An extended and partially redesigned replacement (EASTL) for the C++ standard library was implemented at Electronic Arts in order to resolve these weaknesses in a portable and consistent way. This paper describes game software development issues, perceived weaknesses of the current C++ standard, and the design of EASTL as a partial solution for these weaknesses.

This paper is a good introduction to a unique set of requirements video game development studios face, and compliments Manuel Simoni's recent story about The AI Systems of Left 4 Dead. This paper could be a useful inroad to those seeking to apply newer object-functional programming languages and ideas to game development.