Opportunities for D

[Mike via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 9 July 2014 at 04:50:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/8/2014 9:12 PM, Mike wrote:
>> From what I've observed, I don't think users are complaining 
>> that D doesn't do
>> ref counting.
>
> The recurrent observation is "I use C++/Rust/Whatever because 
> they do ref counting, and D uses GC. Therefore I cannot use D."
>
> ARC has been extensively studied and debated at great length 
> for D. It is not going to work for D. Nobody has figured out a 
> way to make it work for D. Let's move on to what will work.

Agreed.  I'm just trying to clarify the problem.  I believe ARC 
and a reference counted library type are quite different 
solutions to different problems.  Adding a ref counted library 
type, will likely not stop the clamoring.

>> RefCounted can't be used with D's built-in types, right?
>
> The question doesn't make sense. What is a ref counted int?

I meant exceptions, dynamic arrays, etc... that are instantiated 
in the D runtime and expect an automatic memory manager of some 
type to exist.  I don't see how one can use a reference counted 
library type like RefCounted for these. Feel free to correct me, 
if I'm wrong.

Mike