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    Demo: Implicit Context

    Jonathan Blow

    1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2025

    YouTube

    1:01:40 · 28K views · May 21, 2015

    Jonathan Blow gives a formal, hour-long demo of his Jai compiler focused on the implicit context feature. The context carries things like allocators through a program without explicit parameter passing, and the talk walks through the code.

    Cited in discussions of memory arenas and allocators as the origin of the implicit context idea that later appeared in Odin and other languages.

    Software Engineering & LanguagesProgramming language designCompilers, interpreters & program analysis
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    3 comments from Hacker News

    1. @nmiloDec 2025· in “Golang's big miss on memory arenas”

      Implicit context [1] was one of the coolest features of a programming language I’ve ever seen that no one has ever implemented. And I’m really not sure why. Not just Go but most languages have this context passing problem with varying degrees of solution quality, making this implicit and built in could have opened up so many possibilities, more than just arenas. [1]: this video

      RecommendsView on HN
    2. @cyber_kinetistSep 2022· in “A Review of the Odin Programming Language”

      I remember first seeing this idea from Jai ( this video ), and I'm happy it's landing in other languages. Zig went another direction and requires you to specify the allocator explicitly via a function parameter, which is understandable given the language's goal to make everything explicit.

      CitesView on HN
    3. @rudedoggNov 2022· in “Untangling Lifetimes: The Arena Allocator”

      > per-frame "scratch" pool allocator Here's that Jonathan Blow stream if anyone else is curious: this video

      CitesView on HN