Smart pointers instead of GC?

[Don]

On Tuesday, 4 February 2014 at 03:43:53 UTC, ed wrote:
> On Tuesday, 4 February 2014 at 01:36:09 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
>> On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:04:08 -0800, Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 4 February 2014 06:21, Adam Wilson <flyboynw at gmail.com> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 12:02:29 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu <
>>>> SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 2/3/14, 6:57 AM, Frank Bauer wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Anyone asking for the addition of ARC or owning pointers 
>>>>>> to D, gets
>>>>>> pretty much ignored. The topic is "Smart pointers instead 
>>>>>> of GC?",
>>>>>> remember? People here seem to be more interested in 
>>>>>> diverting to
>>>>>> nullable, scope and GC optimization. Telling, indeed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I thought I made it clear that GC avoidance (which includes 
>>>>> considering
>>>>> built-in reference counting) is a major focus of 2014.
>>>>>
>>>>> Andrei
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Andrei, I am sorry to report that anything other than 
>>>> complete removal of
>>>> the GC and replacement with compiler generated ARC will be 
>>>> unacceptable to
>>>> a certain, highly vocal, subset of D users. No arguments can 
>>>> be made to
>>>> otherwise, regardless of validity. As far as they are 
>>>> concerned the
>>>> discussion of ARC vs. GC is closed and decided. ARC is the 
>>>> only path
>>>> forward to the bright and glorious future of D. ARC most 
>>>> efficiently solves
>>>> all memory management problems ever encountered. 
>>>> Peer-Reviewed Research and
>>>> the Scientific Method be damned! ALL HAIL ARC!

>
> Most of us know and understand the issues with ARC and that 
> with a GC. Many of us have seen how they play out in systems 
> level development. There is a good reason all serious driver 
> and embedded development is done in C/C++.
>
> A language is the compiler+std as one unit. If Phobos depends 
> on the GC, D depends on the GC. If Phobos isn't systems level 
> ready, D isn't systems level ready. I've heard arguments here 
> that you can turn off the GC, but that equates to rewriting 
> functions that already exists in Phobos and not using any 
> third-party library.

At Sociomantic, that is exactly what we have done. Phobos is 
almost completely unusable at the present time.

I personally don't think that ARC would make much difference. The 
problem is that *far* too much garbage is being created. And it's 
completely unnecessary in most cases.

To take an extreme example, even a pauseless, perfect GC, 
wouldn't make std.json acceptable.


> Why would anyone seriously consider that as an option? Embedded 
> C++ has std:: and third-party libraries where memory is under 
> control?
>
> Realistically D as a systems language isn't even at the hobby 
> stage.

We're using D as a systems language on a global commercial scale. 
And no, we don't use malloc/free. We just don't use Phobos.