That is cool, Bruce, thanks for posting! I remember in my early RBase days that I took a C class (can't remember what version of C it was at that point). I liked it fine until we got to memory management, if I remember correct it was "pointers"?? I couldn't believe I had to tell the computer where the heck to put stuff!! I passed the class, but I never chose to do anything with it.
Karen -----Original Message----- From: Bruce Chitiea <[email protected]> To: rbase-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Dec 10, 2017 5:17 pm Subject: [RBASE-L] - OT: A Reflection on the integrity of the R:BASE Relational Engine All: I humbly offer - as a meditation of sorts - an excerpt from the esr.ibiblio.org blog authored by Eric Raymond, on 2017-1113, in a series discussing possible paths for transitioning out of C++. No point to push, here: perspective, is all. "... "Ever since the very earliest computer languages it’s been understood that every language design embodies an assertion about the relative value of programmer time vs. machine resources. At one end of that spectrum you have languages like assembler and (later) C that are designed to extract maximum performance at the cost of also pessimizing developer time and costs; at the other, languages like Lisp and (later) Python that try to automate away as much housekeeping detail as possible, at the cost of pessimizing machine performance. In broadest terms, the most important discriminator between the ends of this spectrum is the presence or absence of automatic memory management. This corresponds exactly to the empirical observation that memory-management bugs are by far the most common class of defects in machine-centric languages that require programmers to manage that resource by hand. A language becomes economically viable where and when its relative-value assertion matches the actual cost drivers of some particular area of software development. Language designers respond to the conditions around them by inventing languages that are a better fit for present or near-future conditions than the languages they have available to use. Over time, there’s been a gradual shift from languages that require manual memory management to languages with automatic memory management and garbage collection (GC). This shift corresponds to the Moore’s Law effect of decreasing hardware costs making programmer time relatively more expensive. But there are at least two other relevant dimensions. One is distance from the bare metal. Inefficiency low in the software stack (kernels and service code) ripples multiplicatively up the stack. This, we see machine-centric languages down low and programmer-centric languages higher up, most often in user-facing software that only has to respond at human speed (time scale 0.1 sec). Another is project scale. Every language also has an expected rate of induced defects per thousand lines of code due to programmers tripping over leaks and flaws in its abstractions. This rate runs higher in machine-centric languages, much lower in programmer-centric ones with GC. As project scale goes up, therefore, languages with GC become more and more important as a strategy against unacceptable defect rates. ... " -- For group guidelines, visit http://www.rbase.com/support/usersgroup_guidelines.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBASE-L" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- For group guidelines, visit http://www.rbase.com/support/usersgroup_guidelines.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBASE-L" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
