The D Language: A sweet-spot between Python and C

[Rikki Cattermole via Digitalmars-d]

On 30/03/2015 5:48 p.m., weaselcat wrote:
> On Monday, 30 March 2015 at 04:35:44 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>> On 30/03/2015 5:25 p.m., Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>>> On Monday, 30 March 2015 at 04:16:38 UTC, weaselcat wrote:
>>>> On Monday, 30 March 2015 at 00:57:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>>>> http://blog.experimentalworks.net/2015/01/the-d-language-a-sweet-spot-between-python-and-c/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Reddit:
>>>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/30qqck/the_d_language_a_sweetspot_between_python_and_c/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> a lot of the people in the thread are unaware that D even has RAII
>>>> like C++, and think it's just a GC language like java/etc. Maybe this
>>>> is something worth mentioning more on the introduction?
>>>
>>> Also, there is a perception that you can't  use the standard library and
>>> nicer language features if you do your own allocation and don't depend
>>> on the GC.  A guy worrying about hygiene problems mixing GC and Raii
>>> libraries.  Whereas most garbage is small and fine to use GC for in some
>>> applications - only a subset of real time applications suffer from
>>> generating gazillions of tiny objects.  It would be good to set out
>>> somewhere what you lose as regards std library by insisting on using
>>> nogc.  The point about std.algorithm should be made more prominent.
>>
>> I'm currently working on the forcing GC cleanup mechanism for my web
>> server. I would like to add, that post GC disabled it can be forced to
>> do a cleanup.
>>
>> But I would go a step further, do a force minimize of memory back to
>> the OS and reserve e.g. 32mb. Really what would be nice is a,
>> reserveMax function that and anything else is free'd back to the OS.
>>
>> The reserve, means that even if you are sloppy and end up using the GC
>> in critical code, it won't matter. The memory is already allocated.
>> Cleaning up can happen during non critical times. After all, if you
>> are using more then e.g. 32mb in critical code, you are doing
>> something wrong.
>
>
> I actually use D for a pet project of mine(a game! ;) ) and this is what
> I do. I leave the GC disabled and essentially just use it as a free
> store(while not haphazardly abusing it,) and just manually clean it
> during opportune times.
>
> It's also better to have a single pause for a large cleanup than many
> small pauses, the overhead of actually scanning the memory will kill you.

Atleast with web servers, a whole bunch of pauses can't be dealt with. 
But one large one, can easily be via load balances.