Re: [boost] request for interest in a garbage collection library

Subject: Re: [boost] request for interest in a garbage collection library
From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-05-29 12:02:12

on Sat May 02 2009, Achilleas Margaritis <axilmar-AT-gmail.com> wrote:

>> Therefore, "don't worry about delete; it's taken care of" is not a
>> legitimate programming guideline for C++ with GC.  The question is,
>>
>> ********************************************************************
>> * what /is/ the guideline that explains when I can afford to leak? *
>> ********************************************************************
>>
>> The best we could come up with in general was, "do everything exactly
>> the same way you were doing it before GC came along," at which point the
>> only benefit of GC seems to be that it may keep a program that leaks
>> from running out of memory as soon as it would have otherwise.  That's a
>> pretty marginal benefit, it seems to me.
>>
>
> Yes, I believe that as well: with or without GC, the semantics of a
> C++ program should not be changed.

Do you realize that "do everything exactly the same way you were doing
it before GC came along" means all dynamically-allocated objects must be
deleted by explicit code and you can't rely on GC to do it for you?  Are
you really agreeing with that guideline?

> But the benefit is not marginal, as you say. GC solves a lot of
> problems and, most importantly, increases productivity.

How can it increase productivity if it doesn't change how we write
programs?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com