data-oriented-design-guidelisted

# Data-Oriented Design Guidelines ## Essentials - **The problem is data movement** - Optimize cache traffic, not instruction count, see [references/cache-behavior.md](references/cache-behavior.md) - **Design from the data** - Model bulk input→output transforms, not idealized objects, see [references/data-as-transforms.md](references/data-as-transforms.md) - **Measure first** - Profile cache misses before changing layout, see [references/measurement-and-profiling.md](references/measurement-and-profiling.md) - **Record cheaply, always on** - Per-frame accumulating counters recorded via a cached accumulator pointer (one store, no lookup/branch/lock), history allocated only for viewed counters, see [references/statistics-recording.md](references/statistics-recording.md) ## Layout - **SoA / AoS / AoSoA** - Split structs into per-field arrays for hot loops, see [references/soa-aos-aosoa.md](references/soa-aos-aosoa.md) - **SIMD-friendly layout** - Contiguous columns, padding, alignment for vectorization, see [references/simd-friendly-layout.md](references/simd-friendly-layout.md) - **Nested / variable-length arrays** - Hold child lists in bulk arrays + cache-line chunks, not per-object heap pointers, see [references/nested-arrays.md](references/nested-arrays.md) ## Processing - **Sequential access** - Stream linearly, never chase pointers, see [references/access-patterns.md](references/access-patterns.md) - **Existence-based processing** - Bucket by state so branches become l