The "no gc" crowd

[Paulo Pinto]

Am 09.10.2013 19:05, schrieb Manu:
> On 10 October 2013 01:46, Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org
> <mailto: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 at digitalmars.com>
>         <mailto:newshound2 at __digitalmars.com
>         <mailto: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.

Because Objective-C's GC design was broken, as I mentioned on my 
previous posts.

Anyway, you make good points, thanks for the reply.

--
Paulo