Opportunities for D
Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Tue Jul 8 21:50:36 PDT 2014
On 7/8/2014 9:12 PM, Mike wrote:
> From what I've observed, I don't think users are complaining that D doesn't do
> ref counting.
The recurrent observation is "I use C++/Rust/Whatever because they do ref
counting, and D uses GC. Therefore I cannot use D."
> I believe they are complaining that D doesn't do pervasive
> automatic reference counting.
ARC has been extensively studied and debated at great length for D. It is not
going to work for D. Nobody has figured out a way to make it work for D. Let's
move on to what will work.
> RefCounted can't be used with D's built-in types, right?
The question doesn't make sense. What is a ref counted int?
> IMO users are complaining that the current mark-and-sweep GC is not suitable for
> certain applications, and they want something that is. The solution that comes
> to their mind is pervasive ARC, so that's what they say they want. And because
> they can't actually try it for themselves, they aren't convinced it's not a
> feasible solution (It would be nice to see some measurable results).
We've been over this ground many, many times. Saying people want ARC is correct.
Nobody has proposed a feasible design or a way to get to one (I failed at that,
too).
> If RefCounted is intended to have shared_ptr<T> semantics, then it does appear D
> does reference counting, but I believe it's pervasive automatic reference
> counting that users really want to try.
There's no known way to get ARC in D.
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