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Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!gatech!hubcap!billwolf
From: billwolf@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe,2847,)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Collective response to := messages
Message-ID: <3740@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 5 Dec 88 12:45:03 GMT
References: <808@quintus.UUCP>
Sender: news@hubcap.UUCP
Reply-To: billwolf@hubcap.clemson.edu
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>From article <808@quintus.UUCP>, by ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe):
> In article <3733@hubcap.UUCP> wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:
>>   No, I do NOT want garbage collection.  Since GC cannot handle the
>>   problems of circular-list garbage without outrageous time expenditures,
> 
> Are you up-to-date on this?  There has been a lot of work done on GC in
> the last 5 years.

    No, I'm not, but I'll bet GC still can't be done in O(n) time 
    with regard to the number of items of garbage, with constants
    no greater than the overhead of a deallocation...

>>   Furthermore, GC encourages sloppy programming.
> 
> It would be a service if you could elaborate on this [...]

    The programmer is Johnny-on-the-spot.  He/she KNOWS whether or not
    a given object is no longer needed.  All that is necessary is an 
    indication of this fact via the command DESTROY (Unneeded_Object).

    If the programmer is sloppy and leaves garbage lying all over the place,
    the "maid" must do all the hard work of deciding what to keep 
    and what to throw out.  Furthermore, this price must be paid
    repeatedly at execution time.  This is a heavy price to pay for
    not simply designing it right the first time.