DIP60: @nogc attribute

[Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2014 14:47:00 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 4/17/2014 10:05 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> Obj-C only uses ARC for a minority of the objects.
>> Really? Every Obj-C API I've seen uses Objective-C objects, which all  
>> use RC.
>
> And what about all allocated items?

What do you mean?

>>> A UI is a good use case for ARC. A UI doesn't require high performance.
>> I've written video processing/players on iOS, they all use blocks and  
>> reference
>> counting, including to do date/time processing per frame. All while  
>> using RC
>> network buffers. And it works quite smoothly.
>
> And did you use ref counting for all allocations and all pointers?

Yes.

> There's no doubt that ref counting can be used successfully here and  
> there, with a competent programmer knowing when he can just convert it  
> to a raw pointer and use that.

The compiler treats pointers to NSObject-derived differently than pointers  
to structs and raw bytes. There is no need to know, you just use them like  
normal pointers, and the compiler inserts the retain/release calls for you.

But I did not use structs. I only used structs for network packet  
overlays. I still created an object that contained the struct to enjoy the  
benefits of the memory management system.

> And remember that if you have exceptions, then all the dec code needs to  
> be in exception unwind handlers.

I haven't really used exceptions, but they automatically handle the  
reference counting.

-Steve