[Off-Topic] John Carmack's point of view on GC and languages like JavaScript

[ryuukk_]

On Sunday, 7 August 2022 at 20:43:32 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:
> On Sunday, 7 August 2022 at 17:23:52 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> A bit off topic, but worth keeping as reference when someone 
>> complains about the GC,
>>
>> John Carmack's answer regarding how he sees GC question on the 
>> Lex Fridman Podcast.
>>
>> "It is only when you get into the tighest of the real time 
>> things that you start saying, no the GC is more cost than it 
>> has benefits for, but that is not 99.9+% of all software in 
>> the world..."
>>
>> https://youtu.be/I845O57ZSy4?t=1370
>>
>> He eventually follows up with a discussion he had about the 
>> matter on Twitter, and how some developers cannot let go of 
>> the good old days fighting for each byte.
>>
>> He might know a thing or two about high performance code.
>>
>> Maybe an interview to bookmark and post on the regular GC 
>> discussion threads, as pinned answer.
>
> That's kinda bullshit, it depends on the GC implementation
>
> D's GC is not good for 99.99% "of all software in the world", 
> it's wrong to say this, and is misleading
>
> Java's ones are, because they offer multiple implementations 
> that you can configure and the, they cover a wide range of use 
> cases
>
> D's GC is not the panacea, it's nice to have, but it's not 
> something to brag about, specially when it STILL stop the world 
> during collection, and is STILL not scalable
>
> Go did it right by focusing on low latency, and parallelism, we 
> should copy their GC

What we should promote more about D is the fact that

"GC is here when you need it, but you can also go raw when you 
need it, pragmatism allows D to be used for 99.9% of traditional 
softwares, but is also suitable for the remaining 0.1%"

And not just "We have a GC too, who needs to manage memory 
manually LOL"