radical ideas about GC and ARC : need to be time driven?

Xavier Bigand via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Sat May 10 12:16:54 PDT 2014


I am not sure about the title...

All debates about memory management are interesting even if I am not 
sure to be able to help a lot on it, but I have some concerns about the 
time will elapse to get a valid answer.

My concerns as Dlang user are :
  - Even if GC is the solution, how long I need suffer with destructor's 
issues (calls order)?
  - When we will able to see a performant GC implementation can satisfy 
someone like Manu :) ? Months, years, a decade?
  - Same question if D migrate to ARC?

Why theses questions :
  - Memory management seems to be one of last (or the last) critical 
point for a vastly adoption in production.
  - Some serious alternatives of D appears or will appears if it took 
too much time for D to convince the industry. Despite some strong 
features will certainly never be implemented in alternatives.

Dlang seems to be a lab technology for the moment, maybe it's due to the 
fact their is no major behind company, which is a good point, but I'd 
love so much use D in my day job... For DQuick we completely loose our 
motivation cause of the lack of clear plans on decisions in the language 
having a deep impact on this project.
IMO bottleneck points of languages have to be solved even if in a decade 
those points will be revised. Maybe things must know many iterations 
before being at the expected level. Don't forget the ecosystem around 
the language will also take years to grow before coming really interesting.

In my sens C++ fails to evolve cause of conservative decisions, Apple 
with Clang work on include removal. I'd prefer to see the C++ community 
took this decision to make it standard even if it break the language.
I would be sad to see D, making the same.

If phobos comes allocation free or use allocators, then it will be 
easier to migrate from one memory management to an other one.


In conclusion would be possible to migrate to ARC if the time gap in 
comparison of an ideal implementation of GC is of the order of many 
years or a decade?


Tell me if my questions are irrelevant, but please to put me in a jail :/.


PS : Maybe cause I am young, I am hasty :)


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