On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 07:52:57 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Friday, 8 July 2016 at 22:25:37 UTC, Chris wrote:
after Java. And D was invented when GC was expected by many
people.
The GC was by far the most criticised feature of D...
GC was a big selling point. Every Java book went on about how
Err... no, the big selling point that gave Java traction was
portability and Java being marketed as designed for the
internet and web. GC languages were already available and in
use, but the JVM/.NET made it difficult for commercial
development platforms. Portability and Microsoft's dominance
was a big issue back then.
Yes, of course the "write-once-run-everywhere" fairy tale helped
to spread Java, but while it was gaining traction GC became a
feature everybody wanted. Sorry, but there is not a single book
or introduction to Java that doesn't go on about how great GC is.
Java was the main catalyst for GC - or at least for people
demanding it. Practically everybody who had gone through IT
courses, college etc. with Java (and there were loads) wanted GC.
It was a given for many people.
blah ... Apple even added GC to Objective-C to appease the GC
crowd.
Apple removed the GC rather quickly for the same reasons that
makes GC a bad choice for D. And replaced it with automatic
reference counting.
Yes, it didn't last long. But the fact that they bothered to
introduce it, shows you how big GC was/is.
