Not that I want or need to defend C++ on this list, but
reference-counted smart pointers (e.g. boost::shared_ptr<>), embedded
inside copy-on-write proxy classes, largely simulates eager garbage
collection. Targeted overriding of the new operator can make this lazier
for efficiency.
In other words, there are well established idioms in most successful
languages to solve obvious problems. Haskell's strengths are more in
making these idioms simple and robust enough for the average user, not
just the guru, and to make difficult or impossible the misuse of unsafe
idioms.
Dan
Don Stewart wrote:
asandroq:
Hallo,
Andrew Coppin wrote:
C++ has some interesting ideas. I haven't learned how to use templates
yet, but what I do find interesting is that there is no automatic memory
management, and yet you can still do fairly dynamic programming. I've
never seen any other language that allows this. (I had assumed it's
impossible...) This makes me wonder just now necessary GC really is, and
whether there is some way to avoid it...
Garbage collection was invented by Lisp implementors because of a
common pattern in functional languages: The sharing of parts of
structures, like lists. In an imperative world this is straightforward,
one allocates a linked list, uses it, and then releases the memory. In a
This is why memory management is a notoriously trivial problem in C++ ;)
-- Don (who thinks that complicated access patterns aren't unique to FP)
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