Re: How come Ada isn't more popular?

On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:17:47 +0100, Maciej Sobczak wrote:

Still, there is a strong argument is that for some class of algorithms
it might be beneficial to be able to "drop on the floor" a bigger part
of the graph altogether. Consider a situation where an algorithm breaks
a connection between two nodes in a graph and just looses the interest
in the part that was on the other side of the broken connecion. It might
be a single node, but it might be as well million, with mesh (mess) of
connections between them.

It is still broken, because when you remove a connection (non-directed)
between two nodes you don't know which of them should/may/can fall on the
floor. This information is locally missing. It could be deduced from some
transitive client-master/reference-target relation, but we have demolished
that relation just before by introducing cycles.

In essence, there are two graphs. G is the mesh-mess. R is the graph
induced by the reference-target relation. The problem is that these two
graphs are sufficiently different. R (=>GC) cannot work as a complete model
of G. It could, if it were a part of a larger model of G.

Reclaiming that abandoned part might require
implementing the same tracking logic that GC already provides out of the
box and therefore the argument goes that the use of off-the-shelf GC can
be beneficial for the memory-management aspect of such an algorithm.
(Any thoughts on this?)

Personally, I accept this reasoning and I'm happy that I *can* plug for
example the Boehm collector if I find it useful - but at the same time I
don't find this class of algorithms to be so widespread as to justify GC
as a general "paradigm", worth exposure as a driving language feature.

I think that your initial point is perfectly valid here, GC is fine when it
is an implementation detail. GC as a "paradigm" could turn bad, because it
is too narrow to gasp all cases. Therefore any language which restricts
itself to GC is weakened per design. What is worse, it forces the
programmer to use inherently wrong abstractions.

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

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