General talk about software patterns

[Russ Rufer <russ AT pentad.com>]

You're bringing back some good memories, Ralph--thanks!  Most of the GoF 
patterns (as exemplified) introduce flexibility through polymorphism. 
Depending on your system, you may be able to take advantage of 
polymorphism, even if you don't allocate memory dynamically. You might 
be able to construct all your polymorphic objects at initialization 
time, perhaps using pools of reusable objects, or, assuming C++, take 
advantage of placement new. Using virtual methods, you'll take a small 
(but predictable) time hit going through the v-table, and add ram for 
the v-table pointer itself, but these might be quite a bit more 
acceptable than dynamic memory allocation.

Here's an introductory article you might find useful:

  Effective C++ Memory Allocation
  by Aaron Dailey
  http://www.embedded.com/1999/9901/9901feat2.htm

If you think this is a profitable direction for you to explore, let me 
know and I'll try to remember the sources that helped me when I was 
learning this stuff (but I suspect others on the list will have more 
current suggestions than mine).

- Russ


Ralph Malph wrote:

> Hello all, looking at archives I'm not sure how
> "alive" this list is, but someone out there might be
> listening.
>
> I'm interested in people's opinions as to whether
> design patterns would be useful if you could not
> dynamically allocate memory.  
>
> I am new to patterns and find them quite interesting. 
> I am considering putting in some effort to comprehend
> them, but my projects at work include embedded
> safety-critical real-time systems, and one of the
> things that we do not use is dynamic memory
> allocation.
>
> If anyone has an opinion as to whether I should delve
> into patterns for this type of software (i.e. you have
> considered doing them and/or done them in similar
> systems before) I'd be interested to hear it.
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>                 
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