Smart pointers instead of GC?

[Adam Wilson]

On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 12:51:20 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:

> On 2/3/14, 12:21 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
>> On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 12:02:29 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu
>> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/3/14, 6:57 AM, Frank Bauer wrote:
>>>> Anyone asking for the addition of ARC or owning pointers to D, gets
>>>> pretty much ignored. The topic is "Smart pointers instead of GC?",
>>>> remember? People here seem to be more interested in diverting to
>>>> nullable, scope and GC optimization. Telling, indeed.
>>>
>>> I thought I made it clear that GC avoidance (which includes
>>> considering built-in reference counting) is a major focus of 2014.
>>>
>>> Andrei
>>>
>>
>> Andrei, I am sorry to report that anything other than complete removal
>> of the GC and replacement with compiler generated ARC will be
>> unacceptable to a certain, highly vocal, subset of D users.
>
> Why would you be sorry? "It is what it is", "customer is always right"  
> etc. If we deem that important then we should look into supporting that  
> scenario.
>

There is a big difference between supporting a scenario, and forcing it  
down everyone's throats as The One True Path. I would actually get out an  
pull for supporting both, equally. Let me choose, I know more about the  
memory usage patterns of my cloud-based service than a game developer  
does. In some cases ARC is more efficient, in other cases, the extra  
effort required is more than I care to pay my programmers for. In fact,  
for all of our projects, the efficiency cost of the GC is microscopic  
compared to having to pay the developer/time cost of ARC or Manual  
management. There is a reason we are an exclusively C# shop right now. And  
Apple/Obj-C has consistently proved that all the hype about ARC being more  
efficient for free is untrue. There are plenty of complaints in that camp  
about having to hunt down heisenleaks based on ARC leaking because  
somebody forgot to mark something as weak.

>> No arguments
>> can be made to otherwise, regardless of validity. As far as they are
>> concerned the discussion of ARC vs. GC is closed and decided. ARC is the
>> only path forward to the bright and glorious future of D. ARC most
>> efficiently solves all memory management problems ever encountered.
>> Peer-Reviewed Research and the Scientific Method be damned! ALL HAIL  
>> ARC!
>>
>> Sadly, although written as hyperbole, I feel that the above is fairly
>> close to the actual position of the ARC crowd.
>
> I'm going on a limb here, but it seems you're not convinced :o).
>
>
> Andrei
>
>

Hehe, you might say that. I did buy the GC Handbook to learn more about  
GC's after all, not replace them with something that has demonstrable  
drawbacks. :-)

-- 
Adam Wilson
GitHub/IRC: LightBender
Aurora Project Coordinator