Re: [boost] Smart pointer status, directions, thoughts

From: John Max Skaller (skaller_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-05-29 12:51:29

Greg Colvin wrote:

> Also, decide whether being able to collect cycles is all that
> important.  We have gotten by with acyclic reference counting
> pretty well.

Speak for yourself. I'm writing a compiler, and there is
NO WAY I would bother attempting it in C++. It is hard
enough to design the algorithms, without having to
continually try to figure out how to manage memory:
the data structures the compiler uses are heavily cyclic.

As it stands, the Felix compiler may produce the wrong
output .. but it has NEVER crashed.

I use plenty of software which I guess is written
in C++. Most of it core dumps regularly, probably
due to memory management faults.

I don't call that 'getting along pretty well',
I call it a disgusing state of affairs.
So does management, that requires code to be written in Java.

I've interfaced two systems that both use ref counting
(Python and Tcl). It is very hard to get right.
(Python in particular is quite tricky, since the rules
are specialised for optimal performance for special
cases).

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller_at_[hidden]
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