From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3ccb707f4c91a5f2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation) Date: 1996/10/11 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 188965386 references: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com> <325D7F9B.2A8B@gte.net> <325E452E.265C@gsfc.nasa.gov> <325E9110.1D16@gte.net> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Dave says "As I understand it (I might be wrong.), the Ada95 standard does not include true garbage collection, but, instead, it has something called garbage reduction. Garbage reduction, apparently, is not as efficient as garbage collection, and, I am told, you risk filling up memory if you rely on it for a large, complex application. I am very pleased to see that Intermetrics has developed a true garbage collector for Ada95. Can this be used as a third-party product to add garbage collection to any Ada95 system. If so, then quite a few companies would be wise to reconsider Ada95 before starting their next project." First, you are wrong, completely! I have no idea what garbage reduction might be, but in any case, the Ada language is neutral wrt garbage collection, as, for that matter, is Java from a formal point of view. The whole point of gc is that it has no semantics, it is transparent! Any language that translates into JBC will naturally inherit the garbage collection capability used when Java compiles to JBC. Remember, garbage collection is NOT part of a language, it is part of an implementation. This means that thre is no question of using the intermetrics garbage collection in other contexts, since Intermetrics has not "developed a true garbage collector", they are merely, quite reasonably, borrowing the JBC collector. Any other Ada compiler that generated JBC would inherit the same capability. It is of course possible to add garbage collection to other Ada compilers. Whether this is indeed desirable remains to be seen. Garbage collection has never made it into a mainstream language before for all sorts of reasons, but it seems quite possible that java will change this. Of ccourse we won't really know till Java compilers appear, which should be pretty soon now.