The D Language: A sweet-spot between Python and C

[weaselcat via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 30 March 2015 at 04:35:44 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
> On 30/03/2015 5:25 p.m., Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>> On Monday, 30 March 2015 at 04:16:38 UTC, weaselcat wrote:
>>> On Monday, 30 March 2015 at 00:57:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>>> http://blog.experimentalworks.net/2015/01/the-d-language-a-sweet-spot-between-python-and-c/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Reddit:
>>>> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/30qqck/the_d_language_a_sweetspot_between_python_and_c/
>>>>
>>>
>>> a lot of the people in the thread are unaware that D even has 
>>> RAII
>>> like C++, and think it's just a GC language like java/etc. 
>>> Maybe this
>>> is something worth mentioning more on the introduction?
>>
>> Also, there is a perception that you can't  use the standard 
>> library and
>> nicer language features if you do your own allocation and 
>> don't depend
>> on the GC.  A guy worrying about hygiene problems mixing GC 
>> and Raii
>> libraries.  Whereas most garbage is small and fine to use GC 
>> for in some
>> applications - only a subset of real time applications suffer 
>> from
>> generating gazillions of tiny objects.  It would be good to 
>> set out
>> somewhere what you lose as regards std library by insisting on 
>> using
>> nogc.  The point about std.algorithm should be made more 
>> prominent.
>
> I'm currently working on the forcing GC cleanup mechanism for 
> my web server. I would like to add, that post GC disabled it 
> can be forced to do a cleanup.
>
> But I would go a step further, do a force minimize of memory 
> back to the OS and reserve e.g. 32mb. Really what would be nice 
> is a, reserveMax function that and anything else is free'd back 
> to the OS.
>
> The reserve, means that even if you are sloppy and end up using 
> the GC in critical code, it won't matter. The memory is already 
> allocated. Cleaning up can happen during non critical times. 
> After all, if you are using more then e.g. 32mb in critical 
> code, you are doing something wrong.


I actually use D for a pet project of mine(a game! ;) ) and this 
is what I do. I leave the GC disabled and essentially just use it 
as a free store(while not haphazardly abusing it,) and just 
manually clean it during opportune times.

It's also better to have a single pause for a large cleanup than 
many small pauses, the overhead of actually scanning the memory 
will kill you.