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From: Mike.Chapman@muc.de (Mike Chapman)
Subject: Re: Comparing productivity: LisP against C++ (was Re: Reference Counting)
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Message-ID: <1995Jan1.095619.367@isis.muc.de>
References: <D16Ho3.4BE@lcpd2.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM> <3e2bj6$43a@network.ucsd.edu> <3e30ag$ar1@wariat.wariat.org> <19941231.180912.425222.NETNEWS@UICVM.UIC.EDU>
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 1995 09:56:19 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.c++:105463 comp.lang.lisp:16223

David Hanley (dhanley@picasso) wrote:

[ stupidity deleted ].

:         Did it ever occur to you that GC was not instilled into the
: C++ language for a reason?  That there are many good reasons for
: preferring manual memory management?

The point is that many of us find the reasons Bjarne gave 
for not incorporating GC into the language to be invalid. 

The are very rare occasions and very *few* reasons for preferring 
manual memory management. The only valid one I know of is
for guaranteeing hard real time performance (look up the
definition). In this extreme case memory is usually allocated
entirely statically. This is entirely compatible with having GC
in the language as is any other way of manually managing
memory (explicit free's, recirculating objects through lists
of free objects or whatever).

Using reference counting is just about the dumbest way of
performing any kind of automatic GC there is.
It has the worst performance of all, and simply does not
work for most interesting practical data structures.

Having automatic GC in a language does not preclude manual
memory management. With GC you can have your cake and eat it!

-- 
Mike Chapman <Mike.Chapman@muc.de>
    As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are 
    not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer 
    to reality.  -- Albert Einstein --
