My wish for 2015...

[Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d]

On 24 December 2014 at 04:49, Vic via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, 20 December 2014 at 22:11:35 UTC, Xinok wrote:
>>
>> I'm going to make a stark proposal to the you all, the community and all D
>> users as whole. I wish for us to set an ultimate goal to be made top
>> priority and complete by the end of next year. My wish is to resolve the
>> issue of memory management for D by the end of 2015. This is a significant
>> issue that has affected most of us at one point or another. I think this
>> gives D a bad rap more than anything else and is a point of contention for
>> many, especially those with a background in C/C++.
>>
>> I think the problem of memory management can be reduced to two points:
>> (1) The garbage collector for D is sub-par.
>> (2) There are too many implicit allocations in Phobos.
>>
>> I think three goals need to be met for the problem of memory management to
>> be satisfied:
>> (1) We need a precise garbage collector. The fact that a garbage-collected
>> language experiences memory leaks truly reflects poorly on on D.
>> (2) Furthermore, we need to improve the performance of the garbage
>> collector. There are some things the developer can do to reduce the time and
>> frequency collection cycles, but the current situation is far from optimal.
>> (3) We need a viable alternative to the garbage collection. Whether that
>> be allocators, ref counting, or full-fledged manual memory management, there
>> is great demand for the ability to use D without the GC with little hassle.
>>
>> I sincerely believe that this is the greatest issue facing D today and
>> something that should have been resolved a long time ago. The fact that
>> relatively simple programs can crash with out-of-memory errors (especially
>> 32-bit executables) and high-performance code experiences frequent or
>> lengthy collection cycles means we have a bad situation on our hands.
>>
>> Things like @nogc are a start but much more needs to be done. I'm not
>> hoping for an optimal solution, nor am I expecting a state-of-the-art
>> garbage collector. I think we should simply aim for "good enough". Then once
>> we have a better memory management scheme, we can begin incorporating these
>> changes into Phobos.
>>
>> What do you all think? Can we make improving memory management the top
>> priority for 2015 with the goal of developing an adequate solution by the
>> end of next year?
>
>
> +1. Seems like a reasonable compromise.
>
> (but to be a negative Nancy: to be realistically achieved: it must be the
> only goal and w/ a laser focus. D community still has to demonstrate
> discipline, here is an inspiration: http://youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
> ).
>
> Still cheers and hope, Vic

You should see me talk about changes that neglect/break cross-platform
compatibility. (ie: anything non-x86 :o)