Re: Ada vs. C++

[gisle@kondor.ii.uib.no (Gisle S�lensminde)]

In article <87snyzoad9.fsf@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>, Florian Weimer wrote:
>"Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> writes:
>
>> You may want to read the december issue of the Linux journal (The interview
>> with the author of the Bazaar and the Cathedral). The interesting thing is the
>> rise of Python as a scripting language. It is claimed that 90% of  errors in
>> "working" software is related to memory management.
>

>The people implementing long-living server processes in Python have
>experienced this. ;)  Python memory management is based on reference
>counting, and it's quite easy to create cyclic data structures by
>accident.

Python and other garbage-collected systems gives the 
responibility for memory management to the runtime system instead
of the programmer. In this case the runtime system is designed
in a way that may cause problems in programs which is runing for a 
long period. For a highlevel/scripting language like python, 
it's certainly a benefit to remove the burden of memory management
from the programmer, even when the garbage collector in imperfect.

But of cause, this GC problem may prevent people from using python
for server software, until this problem is solved.

--
Gisle S�lensminde ( gisle@ii.uib.no )   

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