On 16 September 2011 13:52, David Bruant <[email protected]> wrote: > > Furthermore, let imagine for a minute that i need an ECMAScript > implementation for programs i write which i know (for some reason) all are > short live and use a maximum finite amount of memory i know. Based on this > knowledge (i admit this to be weird to have this knowledge), i could decide > to not implement a garbage collector. My programs are short-live and use few > memory, i may not need to care about the memory. > > In this imagniary ECMAScript environment without Garbage Collection, why > would i care of references to be weak or strong? I don't, i write programs.
Right, but why would you care about WeakMap either? The canonical Map is perfectly fine for that situation. > Also, the notion of garbage collection is a separate concern from > programming. It comes from the necessity of being careful of resources. Well yes, but that's part of programming. In practice, all resources are finite. And the difference between finite and infinite space usage is a correctness criterium. Consider writing a server. If I cannot rely on tail call optimization then writing its message loop as a recursive function (e.g. actors style) would be incorrect. If I cannot rely on GC, then allocating an object for each received message would be incorrect. If I cannot rely on weak maps, then, say, mapping every message object to a return IP would be incorrect. /Andreas _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
