Re: How come Ada isn't more popular?

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

OK. What about refcounting with smart pointers?
This form of GC actually works against your determinism goal. It simply is a
poor form of GC, can't handle cycles, and has unpredictable execution times.

Determinism /= time bounded.

Bingo.

For handling cycles there are weak pointers.

Not only. If you have cycles, then you'd better rethink the design.
The difference is between a) graph treated as a mesh (or mess) of nodes which "own" each other and b) graph treated as a collection of nodes.
The former might have ownership cycles between nodes, but not the latter, where ownership is an acyclic relation between graph and nodes.

I agree that this kind of restructuring is not always possible, but for me it is conceptually cleaner and worth trying from the beginning.

A "real" GC smoothes out the collection costs.

Yes, garbage men won't come when you throw the bag out of the doors. They
will come tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or maybe never. But they
will send you the bill anyway... (:-))

:-)

--
Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
Programming : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: How come Ada isnt more popular?
    ... poor form of GC, can't handle cycles, and has unpredictable execution times. ... For handling cycles there are weak pointers. ...
    (comp.lang.ada)
  • Re: How come Ada isnt more popular?
    ... poor form of GC, can't handle cycles, and has unpredictable execution times. ... But your main points of needing scoped-based resource control I indeed agree ... "WithResource" wrapper function pattern. ...
    (comp.lang.ada)