Smart pointers instead of GC?

[Frank Bauer]

On Tuesday, 4 February 2014 at 06:47:03 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 2/3/2014 7:03 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
>> Note that ObjC has special syntax to handle weak pointers. 
>> It's not well
>> understood by many.
>
> Sounds like explicitly managed memory is hardly worse.
>
> On 2/3/2014 3:13 PM, woh wrote:
>>
>>  Any system that forces a single way of handling memory as the 
>> only viable
>> method, be it GC( as D currently does)
>
> This is incorrect. You can use malloc/free in D, as well as 
> write & use your own allocators, and even write your own ref 
> counted types.
>
> On 2/3/2014 1:42 PM, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
>> It's also probably
>> possible to create a drop-in replacement for the GC to do 
>> something else.
>
> It certainly is possible. There's nothing magic about the 
> current GC, it's just library code.


Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> 2. Work on Phobos to see what can be done about avoiding 
> unnecessary allocation. Most likely we'll need to also add a 
> @nogc flag.
> ...
> 4. Work on the core language and druntime to see how to 
> seamlessly accommodate alternate GC mechanisms such as 
> reference counting.
> ...
> I thought I made it clear that GC avoidance (which includes 
> considering built-in reference counting) is a major focus of 
> 2014.
>
> Andrei

Im totally confused: Walter, do you back what Andrei says or do 
we have a good cop / bad cop situation here?