Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cherokee.cis.ohio-state.edu!grichard From: grichard@cherokee.cis.ohio-state.edu (Golden Richard) Newsgroups: comp.sw.components Subject: Re: Garbage Collection & ADTs Message-ID: <62638@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 26 Sep 89 03:44:25 GMT References: <5995@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: Golden RichardOrganization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 30 In article <5995@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> jans@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Jan Steinman) writes: ><62342@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Golden Richard)> [stuff deleted] >The situation is not so simple in dynamic-bound systems. Are you claiming that >Smalltalk, Lisp, Eiffel, Objective C, Gnu Emacs, et. al. have garbage >collectors simply because those who program in them lack serious understanding >of their problems? > I am claiming no such thing. In languages where the choice for GC has been made *for* the programmer, little other choice remains. As a matter of fact, I do not even intend to say that GC is inferior to programmer-managed storage reclamation. The fact that I am relatively ignorant of applications best suited to using GC is why I'm asking the pro-GC spokespersons to please give a concrete example where one would truly need or want GC over the alternative. I'm certainly not of the "assembly language" school that believes that everything should be explicitly and intricately hacked out by the programmer. In particular, automatic scope entry/exit creation/destruction is a godsend. I just don't see the point in making things more complicated than they need to be. -=- Golden Richard III OSU Department of Computer and Information Science grichard@cis.ohio-state.edu "I'm absolutely positive! ...or not."