Re: Ada 0Y plans for garbage collection?

[j-anthony@rcn.com (Jon S. Anthony)]

"Jeffrey Creem" <jeff@thecreems.com> writes:

> "Berend de Boer" <berend@xsol.com> wrote in message
> news:ur82gs8zd.fsf@xsol.com...
> >>
> > And Linux was talking about a specific case: max speed. Perhaps he was
> > correct. That doesn't imply gc is bad for every other app for which
> > speed isn't that all important.
> >
> 
> You know..some day this might be true. I have been hearing the "computers
> are so fast it does not matter anymore" story for at least 10 years now...

Actually, wrt to dynamic languages (aside: Java is still a static
language despite the GC) this _has_ been true for at least 8 years
now.  People still stuck on static languages for the sort of reasons
you mention are the exact current analogue of assembly programmers to
then "hll" advocates.  In general they were wrong and proven to be so.
Similarly, in general dynamic languages can and should be used for
most applications today - for very similar reasons:

1) They are far more expressive and thus far more productive.

2) Because they are more expressive, they can be closer to the domain
   semantics of an application and thus will generally be more
   maintainable.

3) They are as fast and often faster than the static alternatives.


People who talk about how GC "can't" be as fast as programmers hacking
new/free style allocation are just like assembly hackers saying
optimizing compilers will never produce code as fast as hand crafted
assembly.  This is just plain wrong - in both cases.  Sure, there are
examples where both claims hold, but in general the exact opposite is
true - the optimizing compiler will beat the assembly hack and the
modern generational GC will blow away the new/free/controlled_type
hack.

> I am not going to believe it.

Actually you will never believe it, because


> Everything (and yes I mean everything) still runs slower than I'd
> like.

The software that is running slower is doing vastly more than before.
Sometimes it even does something more useful, though it often seems
that it is just more poorly rendered.  And as long as SW
(function/bloat/creeping featurism) holds sway things will continue to
appear "slower than wanted".


/Jon