Re: Garbage Collection

[leake@cme.nbs.gov (Stephe Leake)]

In article <6713@june.cs.washington.edu> klaiber@june.cs.washington.edu (Alexander Klaiber) writes:

   Clearly, there is a tradeoff between readability and efficiency. In my
   version, I reduce efficiency by requiring garbage collection (although
   there exist rather powerful and fast GC algorithms). Your proposal
   would definitely increase the complexity of the program and, due to the
   overhead of a DB-lookup, might actually run slower than the version with
   GC --- depending on circumstances such as frequency of lookups in the 
   database, size of the database (your program) vs. time required for GC, 
   amount of garbage produced etc. (my program).

You are not reducing the complexity of the program; you are merely
hiding it in the vendor-supplied memory management package. If the
program is written correctly, the complexity can be hidden in a
user-supplied memory management package. Then there is no difference
in the readability of the application code, and the programmer has the
chance to tailor the garbage collection algorithm to the application.
Since there are many garbage collection algorithms (each posting here
seems to mention another one), it is clear that each will be suited to
certain applications. Better to require the programmer to choose the
algorithm, than to be tempted to "live with" the single vendor
supplied one. There is no way the vendor can take into account the
trade-offs you mention, but you can!

Stephe Leake 	(301) 975-3431 		leake@cme.nbs.gov
National Institute of Standards and Technology
(formerly National Bureau of Standards)
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