@live questions

[IGotD-]

On Wednesday, 25 November 2020 at 10:51:12 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
>
> It's not that it can't deal with them. It's that it treats them 
> as any other pointer.
>
> Adding a type constructor that says "this pointer is a GC 
> pointer" is a major escalation in complexity of the language. 
> Other languages have done it (see Microsoft's "Managed C++") 
> but I don't think it caught on because I haven't heard much 
> about it in years.

The problem I can't see any way out of this, we need a managed 
pointer type. For example if we want to change the GC type 
globally (everything in libraries like arrays and so on) we need 
some kind of fat pointer that is generic. Now we are stuck in 
tracing GC land forever and projects cannot choose what GC that 
suits their need.

Sure we have a reference counted in the library but this is 
something the programmer adds but the library is still using 
traced GC.

Only raw pointers is limiting the versatility of D.