On 2013-09-23 19:53, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
I talked Walter's ear off a while ago at an ACCU conference about the
notion that reference counting could be a switch passed to the compiler.
Recently he's authored a DIP about the compiler inserting refcounting
primitives in the generated code. Unfortunately I think the DIP is
awfully incomplete and superficial (to the extent it would bring more
damage to the language if any implementation effort would be invested in
it at this point).
Can it be done? Probably. But it would be an absolutely major effort.
I don't know if we're talking about the same things but a couple of us
had a private email conversion about implementing ARC (Automatic
Reference Counting) in the compiler as a result of my suggestion for
adding support for Objective-C in D.
A DIP was never created, at least I cannot find it at the wiki. If I
recall correctly the conversation was never put in the public, which I
think it should be.
I think this is debatable. For one, languages such as Java and C++ still
have built-in "new" but quite ubiquitously unrecommend their usage in
user code. Far as I can tell that's been a successful campaign.
Since when is it _not_ recommended to use "new" in Java?
--
/Jacob Carlborg
