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 Richard 
Organization: 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."