Random points from a D n00b CTO

[w0rp via Digitalmars-d]

I don't think ARC would work in D. You'd need support for 
controlling the reference count in certain situations. You'd need 
type signatures for different reference types. You'd have to 
remove the GC.malloc function, as it would actually be manually 
memory managed with ARC, or otherwise return a fatter pointer, 
which would make it pretty useless. I hold more hope for someone 
improving the garbage collector implementation. This will happen 
sooner when someone who needs it takes the time to write it.

The key issue with GC is the pause time leading to dropped 
frames. Google has recently shown that you can use a garbage 
collector pretty excessively without losing any frames at 60FPS, 
by minimising the collection time so it fits within a frame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBlTzQsUoOw#t=23m

If you wrote most of your game code with allocations you 
controlled and only had some minor GC activity with a 
sufficiently well written garbage collector, you wouldn't notice 
the GC getting in your way.

Whichever automatic memory management scheme you choose, if you 
are writing real time applications, you will ultimately have to 
optimise by taking more control of memory at some point. There's 
no automatic solution for this.