4 ms·

The benefit of not using GC is improved understanding of the code and a better architecture. These things will also lead to better performance. GC was a mistak

by tjoff 8y ago

The benefit of not using GC is improved understanding of the code and a better architecture. These things will also lead to better performance. GC was a mistake. The main reason it is still used outside scripting languages is the notion that non-GC languages need to be low level. Which in practice is kind of true just because we haven't had any real competition in that area.

hasahmed 8y ago
Gc was a mistake? On what possible authority can you make such a claim?
- tjoff 8y ago
  It's not that controversial of a statement. The choice has largely been dictated by the fact that non-GC meant C or C++, and it is not hard to find reasons to avoid them. Now we also have rust, but rust is new and also has a low-level aura, making comparisons to high-level languages difficult. That Go has a GC is a shame, such a missed opportunity.
p_l 8y ago
Not having GC in no way improves understanding of architecture or gives better performance. Hordes of C/C++ programmers that don't understand memory management but swear by malloc()/free() are a good example of that. And it's not like C/C++ are only language without GC, they are just popular now. Typical programmer is taught nothing about memory management, till maybe they learn bits and pieces (often by hearsay and cargo culting). It doesn't matter if we're talking manual or automatic. Without such understanding one cannot write performant code or make a good architecture. Also - a good working definition of low-level language is language that makes you care about things irrelevant to your task...
- tjoff 8y ago
  Not necessarily no. Just as having type information doesn't lead to a better program. But it helps. And is something you need to reason about regardless. Being explicit about it isn't a huge overhead but has lots of benefits.
  - p_l 8y ago
    Being explicit usually means that you have to drop whole classes of optimizations, or manually perform the analysis yourself (probably resulting in errors).
    - tjoff 8y ago
      Being explicit gives the compiler more information to work with, enabling more optimizations.

by tjoff 8y ago

hasahmed 8y ago

Gc was a mistake? On what possible authority can you make such a claim?

tjoff 8y ago
It's not that controversial of a statement. The choice has largely been dictated by the fact that non-GC meant C or C++, and it is not hard to find reasons to avoid them. Now we also have rust, but rust is new and also has a low-level aura, making comparisons to high-level languages difficult. That Go has a GC is a shame, such a missed opportunity.

p_l 8y ago

Not having GC in no way improves understanding of architecture or gives better performance. Hordes of C/C++ programmers that don't understand memory management but swear by malloc()/free() are a good example of that. And it's not like C/C++ are only language without GC, they are just popular now. Typical programmer is taught nothing about memory management, till maybe they learn bits and pieces (often by hearsay and cargo culting). It doesn't matter if we're talking manual or automatic. Without such understanding one cannot write performant code or make a good architecture. Also - a good working definition of low-level language is language that makes you care about things irrelevant to your task...

tjoff 8y ago
Not necessarily no. Just as having type information doesn't lead to a better program. But it helps. And is something you need to reason about regardless. Being explicit about it isn't a huge overhead but has lots of benefits.
- p_l 8y ago
  Being explicit usually means that you have to drop whole classes of optimizations, or manually perform the analysis yourself (probably resulting in errors).
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Being explicit gives the compiler more information to work with, enabling more optimizations.