I never fully understood how to work with this "reserved" values being valid instead of errors when you can't allocate more memory, in either case you still need to check if you have a real entity or a reserved/error, right? Does it really make things simpler?
In the reserved case you do still need to check if you have a reserved entity, but you can put it (along with the other allowed "pseudotypes") in a switch/case block and have it just break back out immediately (the no-op mentioned in the article) rather than having to use a separate if/else to check for Null, or clutter things up with a try/catch wrapper.
It helps avoid the happy path effect. You're always handling something and there's no hidden control flow from the program runtime creeping in because of the cases you missed.
static allocation is de-facto standard in embedded for obvious reasons, and works really well there. in operating systems with more complex memory models designed entirely around dynamic workloads, im not sure asking devs to adopt another slightly complicated design pattern that imposes new hard caps is any less of a cognitive load than before.
i can't bash the functionality and correctness aspect of static allocation, but it is akin to the humble linked list in the sense that you should already know going into the problem that you need it.
Someone recently made the point to me that a lot of dynamic situations can be rewritten as locally static allocations with proper continuations. The idea being that you re-enter the continuation with more memory when you've exhausted your existing pools. The problems are obvious, but it's a neat middle ground.
Does that address what you're asking about?
i can't bash the functionality and correctness aspect of static allocation, but it is akin to the humble linked list in the sense that you should already know going into the problem that you need it.