On Tuesday, 4 February 2014 at 02:15:21 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:54:22 -0800, Frustrated
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Tuesday, 4 February 2014 at 01:36:09 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:04:08 -0800, Manu
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 4 February 2014 06:21, Adam Wilson <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 12:02:29 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu <
[email protected]> wrote:
On 2/3/14, 6:57 AM, Frank Bauer wrote:
Anyone asking for the addition of ARC or owning pointers
to D, gets
pretty much ignored. The topic is "Smart pointers instead
of GC?",
remember? People here seem to be more interested in
diverting to
nullable, scope and GC optimization. Telling, indeed.
I thought I made it clear that GC avoidance (which
includes considering
built-in reference counting) is a major focus of 2014.
Andrei
Andrei, I am sorry to report that anything other than
complete removal of
the GC and replacement with compiler generated ARC will be
unacceptable to
a certain, highly vocal, subset of D users. No arguments
can be made to
otherwise, regardless of validity. As far as they are
concerned the
discussion of ARC vs. GC is closed and decided. ARC is the
only path
forward to the bright and glorious future of D. ARC most
efficiently solves
all memory management problems ever encountered.
Peer-Reviewed Research and
the Scientific Method be damned! ALL HAIL ARC!
Sadly, although written as hyperbole, I feel that the above
is fairly
close to the actual position of the ARC crowd.
Don't be a dick.
I get the impression you don't actually read my posts. And I
also feel like
you're a lot more dogmatic about this than you think I am.
I'm absolutely fine with GC in most applications, I really
couldn't give
any shits if most people want a GC. I'm not dogmatic about
it, and I've
**honestly** tried to love the GC for years now.
What I'm concerned about is that I have _no option_ to use D
uninhibited
when I need to not have the GC.
These are the problems:
* GC stalls for long periods time at completely
un-predictable moments.
* GC stalls become longer *and* more frequent as memory
becomes less
available, and the working pool becomes larger (what a
coincidence).
* Memory footprint is unknowable, what if you don't have a
virtual memory
manager? What if your total memory is measured in megabytes?
* It's not possible to know when destruction of an object
will happen,
which has known workarounds (like in C#) but is also
annoying in many
cases, and supports the prior point.
Conclusion:
GC is unfit for embedded systems. One of the most
significant remaining
and compelling uses for a native systems language.
The only realistic path I am aware of is to use ARC, which
IS a form of GC,
and allows a lot more flexibility in the front-end.
GC forces one very particular paradigm upon you.
ARC is a GC, but it has some complex properties __which can
be addressed in
various ways__. Unlike a GC which is entirely inflexible.
You're not happy with ARC's cleaning objects up on the spot?
Something that
many people WANT, but I understand zero cleanup times in the
running
context is in other occasions a strength of GC; fine, just
stick the
pointer on a dead list, and free it either later during idle
time, or on
another thread. On the contrary, I haven't heard any
proposal for a GC that
would allow it to operate in carefully controlled
time-slices, or strictly
during idle-time.
Cycles are a problem with ARC? True, how much effort are you
willing to
spend to mitigate the problem? None: run a secondary GC in
the background
to collect cycles (yes, there is still a GC, but it has much
less work to
do). Some: Disable background GC, manually require user
specified weak
references and stuff. Note: A user-preferred combination of
the 2 could
severely mitigate the workload of the background GC if it is
still desired
to handle some complex situations, or user errors.
Are there any other disadvantages to ARC? I don't know of
them if there are.
Is far as I can tell, an ARC collector could provide
identical convenience
as the existing GC for anyone that simply doesn't care. It
would also seem
that it could provide significantly more options and control
for those that
do.
I am _yet to hear anyone present a realistic path forwards
using any form
of GC_, so what else do I have to go with? Until I know of
any other path
forward, I'll stand behind the only one I can see.
You're just repeating "I don't care about something that a
significant
subset of D developers do care about, and I don't think any
changes should
be made to support them".
As far as I know, a switch to ARC could be done in a way
that 'regular'
users don't lose anything, or even notice... why is that so
offensive?
I am not trying to be a dick. But I do feel like a small
number of people are trying to gang up on me for daring to
point out that the solution they've proposed solution might
have bigger problems for other people than they care to admit.
The problem is that you are selfish. You won't let anyone in
the
sand box to play with their toys... it's your sand box, even
though it's not. It's your toys, even though it's not. You
pitch
a fit when someone comes into the sand box because you don't
want
them their. They might mess up the sand.
Why can't you get it through your thick skull that just because
people are suggesting alternative methods does not mean that
you
can't have your precious AGC? Also, why is it so difficult that
just because you have no need for real-time applications that
others don't either?
Your method of thinking is very arrogant and I wish you the
best
of luck at the center of the universe... I hear it's a very
unfriendly place.
Funny how you conveniently cut the thread immediately prior to
paragraph where I say I would be all for supporting ARC
side-by-side with the GC. It was only two paragraphs down, I
can't imagine that it would've been that hard to include. I can
only imagine that you left it off because it makes your
name-calling look silly.
However I did point out that making ARC the DEFAULT is unlikely
to ever happen. Walter has consistently refused to approve much
smaller breaking changes in the past. Why would he
all-of-a-sudden decide that now is the time for the biggest
breaking change in the history of D? I am just pointing out
that the creator of D is not likely to approve that pull
request while he is still breathing. Please don't shoot the
messenger.
It has nothing to do with side by side. Who in their right mind
would argue that the AGC is bad in all cases? No one. Who wants
to deal with manual memory management when writing programs that
do not have real-time requirements?
But the fact remains, "D is AGC dependent" and "Some programs
perform poorly when used with AGC" means that D is a bad choice
for those programs, correct? So, your logic is that we are forced
to use D's GC if we want to use D because you think if ARC or MMM
is implemented you'll be forced to use it... and, of course, you
don't write RT apps so it's not your problem.
All we are asking is that D not be GC dependent. This allows one
to write RT apps, embedded apps, etc.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN you can't use a GC to handle your MM. It just
means there are other options, and by your pretentious stance
against "us" tells us you don't want D to change.
Why not join our team? We want AGC, ARC, MMM, MRC, etc. To do
this though D and phobos have to be lifted from the grips of the
GC. IT DOESN'T MEAN you'll have to manage the memory of phobo's.
You can still use the GC just like you do now without any
changes. You'll never know the difference. BUT WE WILL.
It will be the perfect world. We get what we want and you get
what you want. As it stands you, since you have been arguing
points against us, you must not agree with us, which means you do
not want us to be happy. Yet we want both of us to be happy. So
you must be wrong, unless you know for a fact that we both can't
be happy, which is non-sense(cause we can have AGC and ARC side
by side).
So which is it? Are you with us or against us? Do you want to rid
D and Phobos of the hardcoded AGC and allow for other methods of
MM? (hopefully you are intelligent enough to understand that this
doesn't mean that the AGC will go away or be any different to use)
[I'm also not in favor of ridding D of the AGC all together... I
don't think anyone is, it's there, it works for the most part for
most applications... it is handy and useful in many cases... BUT
NOT ALL. So stop pretending it is, and lets solve the problem]
