Re: in defense of GC

On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:44:42 +0100, Markus E Leypold wrote:

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:37:26 GMT, Ray Blaak wrote:

The point is that the programmer is freed from the error prone tedium of
explicitly managing memory.

This is a misconception. There are two fundamentally different issues:

1. Object scopes
2. Memory management

The second issue is less and less relevant as Randy pointed out. The first
issue is always relevant. It is a good design to consider where an object
exists. GC [and upward closures] is an attitude of making everything
potentially global. In fact it is worse than just global. It is "I don't
know where I need that damn thing."

Closure don't "make things global". They do it as much as returning an
Integer, makes, GOD FORBID!, a value global (don't return Integers
people, that makes a value global and we all know, global is bad --
how nonsensical is that?).

You return a value of the type (Integer) which scope encloses the
subprogram returning that value.

Closures provide exactly the opposite of
"making things global". They provide a way for a module (a capsule of
knowledge / implementation) to return a method (how to do things)
without disclosing the implementation (i.e. keeping up the abstraction
barrier).

I have no problem with that. But it is not yet an upward closure when the
type of the returned object is local.

I am a long proponent of procedural types for Ada. Now consider. A
procedure is a limited object. Limited objects can be returned in Ada 2005.
What else you need? [Note, this is still not an upward closure, I am
opposing.]

I can't believe I even have to spell it out. On the other side -- why
do I argue? You're even opposing generics.

Yes I do! (:-))

This is A) mess, B) sloppy programming, C) impossible model in our
networking distributed relativist world.

There are BTW, even distributed garbage collection algorithms. This
probably will enrage you no end? :-).

Yes I know, they are usually called trojans... (:-))

--
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de
.

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