Addressoriented

Addressoriented refers to a design philosophy in which direct manipulation of memory addresses and the layout of the address space drive the architecture, representation, and algorithms of a system. The term is not widely standardized and is used mainly in discussions contrasting low-level, address-centric coding with higher-level abstractions such as object-oriented or value-oriented programming.

Core ideas include explicit pointer arithmetic, control of memory placement, and optimization strategies that depend on memory locality and alignment. In practice, address-oriented approaches appear in systems programming, embedded development, and operating-system internals, where programmers work closely with addresses, segments, and the constraints of hardware.

Advantages include fine-grained control, potential performance gains, and predictable memory behavior in resource-constrained environments. Disadvantages include increased complexity, reduced portability, higher risk of memory safety errors, and greater maintenance burden.

Examples of address-oriented practice can be seen in C and assembly programming, where developers manipulate pointers and perform manual memory management, as well as in kernel code that depends on specific memory layouts.

See also: pointer arithmetic, memory management, address space, low-level programming, memory safety.