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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: in defense of GC
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From: Markus E Leypold
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Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:44:42 +0100
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"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:

> On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:37:26 GMT, Ray Blaak wrote:

>> The point is that the programmer is freed from the error prone tedium of
>> explicitly managing memory.
>
> This is a misconception. There are two fundamentally different issues:
>
> 1. Object scopes
> 2. Memory management
>
> The second issue is less and less relevant as Randy pointed out. The first
> issue is always relevant. It is a good design to consider where an object
> exists. GC [and upward closures] is an attitude of making everything
> potentially global. In fact it is worse than just global. It is "I don't
> know where I need that damn thing."

Closure don't "make things global". They do it as much as returning an
Integer, makes, GOD FORBID!, a value global (don't return Integers
people, that makes a value global and we all know, global is bad --
how nonsensical is that?). Closures provide exactly the opposite of
"making things global". They provide a way for a module (a capsule of
knowledge / implementation) to return a method (how to do things)
without disclosing the implementation (i.e. keeping up the abstraction
barrier). 

I can't believe I even have to spell it out. On the other side -- why
do I argue? You're even opposing generics.

> This is A) mess, B) sloppy programming, C) impossible model in our
> networking distributed relativist world.

There are BTW, even distributed garbage collection algorithms. This
probably will enrage you no end? :-).