On Monday, 7 January 2013 at 17:19:25 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
I don't think that any of the documentation or D's developers
have ever
claimed that you could use the full language without the GC.
Quite the
opposite in fact. There are a number of language features that
require the GC
- including AAs, array concatenation, and closures.
True, there is some documentation describing that certain
features require the use of the GC. Although I would say that the
documentation needs to be made a lot more clear on this point.
For example in the AA section there's no mention that the GC is
required.
What you are saying is that while the GC is considered optional,
it is not really optional given the language as a whole, only a
(I assume large) subset of the language will work without the GC.
In other words, the GC is partly optional.
I think we can do a lot better to make it more clear that the GC
is not 100% optional, and also indicate clearly what features
will not work without one.
You _can_
program in D
without the GC, but you lose features, and there's no way
around that. It may
be the case that some features currently require the GC when
they shouldn't,
but there are definitely features that _must_ have the GC and
_cannot_ be
implemented otherwise (e.g. array concatenation and closures).
Is this a hard fact, or can there be a way to make it work? For
example what about the custom allocator idea?
From a marketing POV, if the language can be made 100% free of
the GC it would at least not be a deterrent to those who cannot
accept having to use one. From a technical POV, there are
definitely many situations where not using a GC is desirable.
--rt
