Garbage Collection for Systems Programmers

[Adam Wilson]

On Monday, 1 April 2024 at 01:58:51 UTC, Lance Bachmeier wrote:
> On Sunday, 31 March 2024 at 14:22:43 UTC, Adam wrote:
> The first question to ask is "Does it matter one way or the 
> other?" Since you're probably not writing the Linux kernel, 
> even if you're engaged in 'systems programming', the answer is 
> quite often no. If the answer is yes, the second question to 
> ask is "Does it matter enough?"
>
> I dislike these debates because most of those arguing against 
> the GC are insufficiently informed to engage in a worthwhile 
> debate. Many of them don't even understand that you can do 
> things with a programming language other than write video games.

The discourse around the GC has gotten so ridiculous that I have 
seriously considered asking Walter to declare that "If you want 
to create an OS or Video Game, consider a different language."

OS/Games is actually a fairly uncommon use of D, if you look at 
what the people who aren't whining endlessly about the GC are 
actually doing with it.

Personally, I blame the OS/Game crowd for single-handedly keeping 
D out of the web service space for the past *decade* because, 
instead of improving the GC to the point that long-running 
processes are possible, we've built a mountain of (mis)features 
designed to assuage their demands. I maintain that this was 
probably the second biggest mistake in D's history.

We need to accept a fact that I learned at DConf 2017, the no-GC 
crowd will not be silenced until the GC is removed from the 
language. However, Walter has said the GC is here to stay. 
Therefore, the no-GC crowd will never be silenced. We've given 
them a plethora of tools to work without the GC. It is time that 
we stopped giving them so much our time. We have bigger problems 
to solve.