Re: Ada GC

In article 96-02-043, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:


> I don't know what compiler vendor Jay worked for in the early 80's,
> but if he heard customers asking for garbage collection (I mean real
> customers with money), I sure did not see them around, and I *still*
> do not see them around. As I noted in an earlier note, we have had
> many serious and interesting requests for enhancement of GNAT from
> serious users, but not one such user has even suggested garbage
> collection as a useful addition.


> It is not "slacking-off" to listen to your customers and implement
> what they want to see. For example, I think far more customers were
> interested in bindings to standard libraries than GC.


A company that offers what people ask for will do ok. A company that
offers what people didn't realize they needed will do fantastically.
I'd be surprised if Sun's customers were blowing down their doors with
requests for a garbage-collected scripting language that masqueraded
as C++, at least until Sun showed them what it was good for...


The second approach is called 'market leadership'.


> I must say that, having gone through the effort of implementing the
> finalization features of Ada 95, I would guess that full GC could have
> been implemented with much less effort, and for many purposes it would
> clearly be preferable.


I've been saying this for years. Ada included all the strong typing
necessary to do a real GC, including the run-time typing of union
types, and the more-or-less proper handling of exceptions but then
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by chickening out. The net
result is that all Ada programs pay the _costs_ of GC, but aren't
getting any of the _benefits_.


----


BTW, I understand that the new Telecom Bill that just passed Congress
has outlawed the ab*rting of tasks (or at least the discussion of it
on Usenet). This process will heretofore be called 'termination
enhancement', and an ab*rted task will be considered
'termination-enhanced'.


Please update your programs and language standards.


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