The "no gc" crowd

[Manu]

On 10 October 2013 01:46, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org> wrote:

> Am 09.10.2013 16:30, schrieb Manu:
>
>> On 9 October 2013 17:31, Walter Bright <newshound2 at digitalmars.com
>> <mailto:newshound2@**digitalmars.com <newshound2 at digitalmars.com>>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>     On 10/9/2013 12:29 AM, Manu wrote:
>>
>>         Does anyone here REALLY believe that a bunch of volunteer
>>         contributors can
>>         possibly do what apple failed to do with their squillions of
>>         dollars and engineers?
>>         I haven't heard anybody around here propose the path to an
>>         acceptable solution.
>>         It's perpetually in the too-hard basket, hence we still have the
>>         same GC as
>>         forever and it's going nowhere.
>>
>>
>>     What do you propose?
>>
>>
>> ARC. I've been here years now, and I see absolutely no evidence that the
>> GC is ever going to improve. I can trust ARC, it's predictable, I can
>> control it.
>> Also, proper support for avoiding the GC without severe inconvenience as
>> constantly keeps coming up. But I don't think there's any debate on that
>> one. Everyone seems to agree.
>>
>
> As someone that is in the sidelines and doesn't really use D, my opinion
> should not count that much, if at all.
>
> However, rewriting D's memory management to be ARC based will have
> performance impact if the various D compilers aren't made ARC aware.
>

Supporting ARC in the compiler _is_ the job. That includes a
cyclic-reference solution.

Then there is the whole point of rewriting phobos and druntime to use ARC
> instead of GC.
>

It would be transparent if properly supported by the compiler.

Will the return on investment pay off, instead of fixing the existing GC?
>

If anyone can even _imagine_ a design for a 'fixed' GC, I'd love to hear
it. I've talked with a lot of experts, they all mumble and groan, and just
talk about how hard it is.

What will be the message sent to the outsiders wondering if D is stable
> enough to be adopted, and see these constant rewrites?
>

People didn't run screaming from Obj-C when they switched to ARC. I think
they generally appreciated it.
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