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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ncar!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!hubcap!billwolf
From: billwolf@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe,2847,)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Garbage Collection
Message-ID: <3888@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 88 17:43:35 GMT
References: <864@quintus.UUCP>
Sender: news@hubcap.UUCP
Reply-To: wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>From article <864@quintus.UUCP>, by ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe):
> In article <3865@hubcap.UUCP> billwolf@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:
>>    Basically, I charge garbage collection with the same crime that
>>    the GOTO was charged with: its sole function is to facilitate
>>    UNDISCIPLINED programming.  From Tremblay and Sorenson, 1985:
> 
> This is completely back-to-front.  Doing your own storage management
> is like doing your own stack management instead of using procedure calls.

     Procedure calls are used to manage the complexity of creating the
     structure and of maintaining it.  They should also be used to
     manage its destruction.  This is clear and consistent, and promotes
     readable and reliable operations on a well-defined structure with
     well-defined space/time properties.

> I think it would be very hard to accuse functional programming languages
> like ML of providing an _un_disciplined environment.  [...] 
> Storage management is particularly easy in a language without 
> side effects to data structures.

     OK, try getting a referentially transparent language to
     handle systems which are not static, but change over time.

     With increased power comes increased responsibility.   


                                      Bill Wolfe

                              wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu