Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake)

[jsa@alexandria.organon.com (Jon S Anthony)]

In article <dewar.872872168@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> As for applications where you can get a factor of several productivtiy
> improvement by using garbage collection, I think that is rubbish. Remember

I find myself in complete agreement with you here - despite the
likelyhood that I am often seen as a GC fanatic.


> So I know the advantage, and it is consderable, but the idea that GC alone
> could cut down the time to design/document/code/test/integrate/productize
> a product by a factor of several seems ludicrous to me.

Again (though I find it hard to choke out, :-), I find that I must
agree.  Even a factor of 2 is rather hard to believe, let alone
"several factors".  Let's face, getting even a 10% advantage is a rare
thing.  OTOH, even a 10% advantage must then be characterized as a
"big deal".  Personally, I think GC varies anywhere from 0% to maybe
15-20% depending on the application characteristics.


> Perhaps you are just talking about coding time -- even there the estimate
> is way high.

Agreed.  The coding advantage is really the biggest win as you don't
have to put the same level of effort up front in ensuring things will
behave correctly wrt dynamic memory issues.


> You do NOT have to be the "greatest darn programmer in the whole
> world" to avoid wasting 40-50% of your time looking for memory
> allocation bugs in C++, you just need to create the proper
> abstractoins in the first place.

OK, I'm still choking, but again, I must agree...

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
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"Nightmares - Ha!  The way my life's been going lately,
 Who'd notice?"  -- Londo Mollari