Getting completely (I mean ENTIRELY) rid off GC

[Daniel Alves via Digitalmars-d]

You know, currently I spend most of my time programming in ObjC, 
but I really love C, C++ and D.

Since the Clang Compiler, ObjC dropped the GC entirely. Yes, 
that's right, no GC at all. And, in fact, it does support 
concurrent programming and everything else. The magic behind it 
is ARC - Automated Reference Counting 
(http://clang.llvm.org/docs/AutomaticReferenceCounting.html): the 
compiler analyzes your code, figures out object scopes and sets 
the correct calls to retain/release/autorelease (for those who 
are not familiar with ObjC, pointers are mostly reference 
counted). So there is no need for a GC and all its complications.

In addition to that, Rusty also has an approach like ObjC called 
Region Pointers and objects' Lifetime 
(http://doc.rust-lang.org/guide-pointers.html#boxes). The idea is 
the same, but, depending on the type of the pointer, the compiler 
may add a call for freeing or for decrementing a pointer 
reference counter.

Finally, it looks like there is a language called Cyclone that 
goes the same way (paper here: 
http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/cyclone/papers/cyclone-regions.pdf)

Since I read Andrei's book, D Programming Language, I've been 
asking myself why D does not go this way...

Anyone knows about a good reason for that?

On Thursday, 11 September 2014 at 18:04:06 UTC, Andrey Lifanov 
wrote:
> Thank you all for replies!
>
> I'm not saying that GC is evil. I just want to have different 
> options and more control, when this is required. If D offered 
> such choice, many good C++ programmers would have certainly 
> considered D as a perfect alternative to C++.
>
> D states that there is no strict and dogmatic rules that it 
> follows about programming languages paradigms. And that it is a 
> general purpose language. So I think it would be nice to have 
> more options of how we can manage memory.
>
> I will continue investigation and certainly inform you if it 
> ends with something useful.