Deterministic Memory Management With Standard Library Progress

[cym13 via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 5 March 2017 at 00:06:04 UTC, Inquie wrote:
>> Finally GC problems are completely exagerated. It only runs 
>> when used so having it to manage exceptions only for example 
>> is completely viable, and it is possible to dereference 
>> threads if you don't want them to be seen by the GC. Using GC 
>> globally and avoiding it locally on heat points has proved to 
>> be a successful strategy within the community. So I wouldn't 
>> worry too much, giving it a try is paramount.
>
> Please stop making this argument. Just because one can amortize 
> out the effect of the GC does not in any way change the fact 
> that it is a stop the world GC and for certain applications 
> this is provably a show stopper. One can come up with any 
> number of commercial apps that fail using D's GC. Some 
> applications require near real time behavior and D's GC does 
> not provide any bounds on how long it runs... regardless of any 
> average behavior(as that is meaningless when it only takes once 
> to kill a person, create an audio glitch, etc). All these apps 
> work fine with deterministic memory management or possibly 
> other methods, but not D's GC.
>
> It is not a viable solution just because it is a solution for 
> you. When you start writing these apps that simply do not 
> function to the standards set by the customer and this is all 
> due to D's GC, then you will experience why it is bad. Until 
> then, you won't have a clue.
>
> It doesn't matter if it works 99.99% of the time, with these 
> applications that may run for months at a time and have 
> critical behavior constraints, 99.99% doesn't look that great. 
> So, please don't push your ideals, motivations, experiences on 
> others and just be honest with them. D's GC sucks for near real 
> time applications, and it has problems. It one avoids the GC as 
> best as they can using traditional techniques, it minimizes the 
> effect of the GC and makes the app closer to real time.

I completely agree that there are cases where having the GC is a 
no-go and have even seen a number of projects doing fine without 
it. But exactly as you say, just because it is a problem for you 
doesn't mean it's a problem for everyone. Clearly the OP hasn't 
tried D yet so as far as I'm concerned it looks like his concern 
about GC come from critics he may have read elsewhere and not 
from an actual case that makes GC impossible to use. Given that I 
feel like conforting the fact that, indeed, it works great for 
most applications.