Comment by jdiff

2 years ago

Really? Because I myself asked the people who used software about Garbage Collection and they said "I mean, it's a job."

The people who use software have absolutely no idea or opinion on the topic.

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jdiff

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CyberDildonics  2 years ago

The people who use software have absolutely no idea or opinion on the topic.

I asked 'the people who use software' and they don't like excessive memory usage or stuttering from bulk collection.

Also libraries written in a garbage collected language are only going to be usable in the same language.

Lots of people only think about the language they want to program in, then rationalize it being fine. That's how we got stuff like electron. When people think about what someone actually wants to receive that stuff goes away.

  • lispm  2 years ago

    > I asked 'the people who use software' and they don't like excessive memory usage or stuttering from bulk collection.

    Two of the most widely programming languages are implemented on top of garbage collected runtimes: JavaScript and Java. There are many applications where garbage collection works just fine.

    > Also libraries written in a garbage collected language are only going to be usable in the same language.

    See .net and the JVM. Those are nowadays runtimes with garbage collection and multiple languages.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JVM_languages

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CLI_languages

    • angiosperm  2 years ago

      Yet, out of 2489 packages installed on this machine, exactly zero are in Java, .Net, or Javascript. Why do you suppose that could be?

      The only one that is a serious hog is the browser, for reasons you can probably deduce.

      Pandoc, I will own, is in Haskell, but it never runs long enough to GC.

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    • CyberDildonics  2 years ago

      Two of the most widely programming languages

      Widely used? This is the point. The programs that people use directly are written in C++. Programmers try to get away with garbage collection because it's what they want, not what people using software want.

      Those are nowadays runtimes with garbage collection and multiple languages.

      That's like saying typescript can be used in javascript, it's all the same underneath. It isn't the same as something native that can be used and consumed anywhere else. Software in non native languages keeps getting re-written over and over and not widely reused. Once someone does something natively and does it well like sqlite, image libraries, etc. it stays done.

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