Summary
This episode explains the critical concepts of alignment and padding in C++ data structures. Jason demonstrates how different data types require specific memory alignments (integers on 4-byte boundaries, long longs on 8-byte boundaries) to ensure efficient code generation and hardware compatibility. He illustrates how these alignment requirements lead to padding—unused bytes inserted between structure members—which can significantly increase memory usage. Through practical examples, he shows how rearranging structure members can reduce wasted space without using non-standard packing directives.