Re: GCs in the news
UE4 wasn't really rewritten from scratch, was more like, take UE3, rewrite various parts and add new features, keep doing that for a few years-- Code style isn't modern C++. No lambda, r-value refs, unique types, algorithms(everyone just bangs out for loops), task implementation is laughable, code mostly single threaded. Basically verbosity hell. The dependency on GC is the same as previous versions, they did not fundamentally change the object model in UE4. I think they did work on the GC, so perhaps it is faster /shrug. They only use the GC for certain objects(deriving UObject). Powerful engine? Yes for sure. If I needed to make a graphically AAA game ASAP I'd use UE4. Doesn't change the fact that the code is nothing impressive. The Blueprint system technically compiles down to UnrealScript bytecode-- but yes Unrealscript is dead, thankfully. UEngine has been rewritten from scratch. UnrealScript doesn't even exist anymore. It is the new UEngine that depends on GC, and we're talking C++, not UnrealScript here (again, UnrealScript is gone).
Re: GCs in the news
I'm rather fond of RAII, I find that I rarely every need shared semantics. I use a custom object model that allows for weak_ptrs to unique_ptrs which I think removes some cases where people might otherwise be inclined to use shared_ptr. Shared semantics are so rare in fact I would say I hardly use it at all, I go for weeks of coding without creating a shared type, not because I'm trying to do so, but because it just isn't necessary. Which is why GC seems like such a waste, given my experience in C++, where I hardly need shared memory, I see little use for a GC(or even ARC etc), all it will do is decrease program performance, make deterministic destruction impossible, and prevent automatic cleanup of none memory resources. Rust seems to have caught on to what C++ has accomplished here. Oh, and Unreal? Yes they have a GC type "UObject", I worked on Unreal at one point, my impression was that this originated back with the original Unreal(circa 1998?), likely caused by the popularity of Java at the time. As for the Unreal code base? Pass on that.
Re: GCs in the news
I hate GC, so there. I see no proof of this. And not everybody hates GCs. Bye, bearophile
Re: LinkedIn Article to be: Why you need to start moving off C/C++ to D, now.
D might someday be a replacement for those languages, but right now, with a bad GC as the default memory model? I don't think so. D is more of an alternative for Java, C# etc with better meta-programming.
