On 10 October 2013 01:46, Paulo Pinto <[email protected]> wrote: > Am 09.10.2013 16:30, schrieb Manu: > >> On 9 October 2013 17:31, Walter Bright <[email protected] >> <mailto:newshound2@**digitalmars.com <[email protected]>>> >> wrote: >> >> On 10/9/2013 12:29 AM, Manu wrote: >> >> Does anyone here REALLY believe that a bunch of volunteer >> contributors can >> possibly do what apple failed to do with their squillions of >> dollars and engineers? >> I haven't heard anybody around here propose the path to an >> acceptable solution. >> It's perpetually in the too-hard basket, hence we still have the >> same GC as >> forever and it's going nowhere. >> >> >> What do you propose? >> >> >> ARC. I've been here years now, and I see absolutely no evidence that the >> GC is ever going to improve. I can trust ARC, it's predictable, I can >> control it. >> Also, proper support for avoiding the GC without severe inconvenience as >> constantly keeps coming up. But I don't think there's any debate on that >> one. Everyone seems to agree. >> > > As someone that is in the sidelines and doesn't really use D, my opinion > should not count that much, if at all. > > However, rewriting D's memory management to be ARC based will have > performance impact if the various D compilers aren't made ARC aware. >
Supporting ARC in the compiler _is_ the job. That includes a cyclic-reference solution. Then there is the whole point of rewriting phobos and druntime to use ARC > instead of GC. > It would be transparent if properly supported by the compiler. Will the return on investment pay off, instead of fixing the existing GC? > If anyone can even _imagine_ a design for a 'fixed' GC, I'd love to hear it. I've talked with a lot of experts, they all mumble and groan, and just talk about how hard it is. What will be the message sent to the outsiders wondering if D is stable > enough to be adopted, and see these constant rewrites? > People didn't run screaming from Obj-C when they switched to ARC. I think they generally appreciated it.
