Handles are the better pointers (2018)

The author proposes replacing raw and smart pointers with "index-handles" for dynamic memory management in C/C++, arguing that this approach avoids common problems like cache misses, memory fragmentation, and circular reference leaks that plague large codebases relying on smart pointers and small heap-allocated objects. This technique works best in data-oriented architectures where centralized systems own tightly-packed arrays of data items and return opaque index-based handles to external code, rather than direct pointers.