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"Remember that whatever works best for you, it’s still better than having to malloc and free by hand. Happy allocating!" Nice, they are saying exactly the same

"Remember that whatever works best for you, it’s still better than having to malloc and free by hand. Happy allocating!" Nice, they are saying exactly the same as those pesky game developers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK50z_gUpZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK50z_gUpZI

k__ 7y ago
What's their opinion on Rust?
- StreamBright 7y ago
  Great question. I am really hoping that the non-GC world is taking off with Rust.
  - joppy 7y ago
    How does Rust deal with long-lived objects that cannot be block-scoped (or request-scoped, in the context of a server for example)? A typical example here would be a UI framework, where memory has to be managed for the window and its widgets, and then the entire application is suspended until the next event. The user can open and close windows in random orders, and so on. Perhaps some windows generate a lot of associated data which should be disposed of when that window closes, but can also be dragged over into the other windows and duplicated around, so the data is not “owned” by a single window. It seems to me that this is where the GC “set and forget” model really shines, since otherwise you just have to do all that work manually using an allocation and a free, or a constructor and a destructor, or some similar pattern. Perhaps Rust has some clever answer for this?
    - nitnelave 7y ago
      It seems like you want a reference-counted pointer: you get shared ownership, and the object is deleted when the last reference to the pointer is deleted. Similar to C++'s std::shared_ptr
      - joppy 7y ago
        Right, but then you take on a bunch of baggage you don’t have in a GC setting. For instance if you want to make zillions of these objects and delete them you are paying overhead for lots of allocations and deallocations made heavier by the reference counting. You pay time overhead for atomic increment/decrement, and if there are cyclic structures then you pay a big price in the code complexity to deal with them properly and not cause memory leaks.
    - steveklabnik 7y ago
      > How does Rust deal with long-lived objects that cannot be block-scoped (or request-scoped, in the context of a server for example)? The issue is not really the scope, the issue is how many owners the data needs to have. A variable that needs to live longer than a scope, but only has a single owner, can be directly returned from that scope. Once you have the need for multiple owners, the most straightforward answer is "reference count them," but it depends on your exact requirements. > A typical example here would be a UI framework, where memory has to be managed for the window and its widgets, and then the entire application is suspended until the next event. GTK heavily uses reference counting. People are also investigating what a "rust-native" UI toolkit would look like; taking strong influences from ECSes. It's an open question if those architectures end up better than refcounts.
- Jhsto 7y ago
  I would imagine excited. Rust's affine type system is an application of logic theory. OCaml is initially French academic production and (from an anecdotal experience) those academics tend to dis how impure most software (and memory management) is. While Rust does not have the purest theoretical foundations, it's still fresh air and will likely result in people paying more attention to the work of researchers in theoretics.
- gopiandcode 7y ago
  Before self-hosting, the rust compiler was originally in OCaml so presumably there's an overlap in communities there.
  - k__ 7y ago
    I mean, game developers, not OCaml devs The point was, they said "do manaual memory management" if you want speed.
pjmlp 7y ago
Yeah, like Tim Sweeney. "It's interesting that many games can afford a constant 10x interpretation overhead for scripts, but not a spikey 1% for garbage collection." https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/880607734588211200 https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/880607734588211200 https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Garbage_Collection_Overview https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Garbage_Collection_Overview Which was it again, the engine chosen by Nintendo, Microsoft and Google as first party to their 3D APIs? https://developer.nintendo.com/tools https://developer.nintendo.com/tools https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/unity-development-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/unity... https://stadia.dev/blog/unity-production-ready-support-for-stadia-now-available/ https://stadia.dev/blog/unity-production-ready-support-for-s... https://developer.android.com/games/develop/build-in-unity https://developer.android.com/games/develop/build-in-unity The anti-GC crowd on the games industry, is no different than the ones that fought adoption of C/Modula-2/Pascal over Assembly, and then fought adoption of C++ and Objective-C over C. Eventually they will suck it up when the major platform owners tell them it is time to move on.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  >"It's interesting that many games can afford a constant 10x interpretation overhead for scripts, but not a spikey 1% for garbage collection." Why is that surprising? Games are basically about humans predicting things and random spikes prevent that from happening in time sensitive games. Beyond game play implications, I suspect there's also something about jerkiness in movement that bugs human senses.
  - sgrove 7y ago
    It's not entirely surprising, but one might imagine a different approach: always allocate a 1% buffer for an unexpected GC. It's not a very satisfactory answer (and there are likely much better tradeoffs to be made), but given the 10x and 1% comparison (not entirely apples to apples though) the comment sounds a bit more interesting.
    - loopback_device 7y ago

k__ 7y ago

What's their opinion on Rust?

StreamBright 7y ago
Great question. I am really hoping that the non-GC world is taking off with Rust.
- joppy 7y ago
  How does Rust deal with long-lived objects that cannot be block-scoped (or request-scoped, in the context of a server for example)? A typical example here would be a UI framework, where memory has to be managed for the window and its widgets, and then the entire application is suspended until the next event. The user can open and close windows in random orders, and so on. Perhaps some windows generate a lot of associated data which should be disposed of when that window closes, but can also be dragged over into the other windows and duplicated around, so the data is not “owned” by a single window. It seems to me that this is where the GC “set and forget” model really shines, since otherwise you just have to do all that work manually using an allocation and a free, or a constructor and a destructor, or some similar pattern. Perhaps Rust has some clever answer for this?
  - nitnelave 7y ago
    It seems like you want a reference-counted pointer: you get shared ownership, and the object is deleted when the last reference to the pointer is deleted. Similar to C++'s std::shared_ptr
    - joppy 7y ago
      Right, but then you take on a bunch of baggage you don’t have in a GC setting. For instance if you want to make zillions of these objects and delete them you are paying overhead for lots of allocations and deallocations made heavier by the reference counting. You pay time overhead for atomic increment/decrement, and if there are cyclic structures then you pay a big price in the code complexity to deal with them properly and not cause memory leaks.
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    > How does Rust deal with long-lived objects that cannot be block-scoped (or request-scoped, in the context of a server for example)? The issue is not really the scope, the issue is how many owners the data needs to have. A variable that needs to live longer than a scope, but only has a single owner, can be directly returned from that scope. Once you have the need for multiple owners, the most straightforward answer is "reference count them," but it depends on your exact requirements. > A typical example here would be a UI framework, where memory has to be managed for the window and its widgets, and then the entire application is suspended until the next event. GTK heavily uses reference counting. People are also investigating what a "rust-native" UI toolkit would look like; taking strong influences from ECSes. It's an open question if those architectures end up better than refcounts.
Jhsto 7y ago
I would imagine excited. Rust's affine type system is an application of logic theory. OCaml is initially French academic production and (from an anecdotal experience) those academics tend to dis how impure most software (and memory management) is. While Rust does not have the purest theoretical foundations, it's still fresh air and will likely result in people paying more attention to the work of researchers in theoretics.
gopiandcode 7y ago
Before self-hosting, the rust compiler was originally in OCaml so presumably there's an overlap in communities there.
- k__ 7y ago
  I mean, game developers, not OCaml devs The point was, they said "do manaual memory management" if you want speed.

pjmlp 7y ago

Yeah, like Tim Sweeney. "It's interesting that many games can afford a constant 10x interpretation overhead for scripts, but not a spikey 1% for garbage collection." https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/880607734588211200 https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/880607734588211200 https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Garbage_Collection_Overview https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Garbage_Collection_Overview Which was it again, the engine chosen by Nintendo, Microsoft and Google as first party to their 3D APIs? https://developer.nintendo.com/tools https://developer.nintendo.com/tools https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/unity-development-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/unity... https://stadia.dev/blog/unity-production-ready-support-for-stadia-now-available/ https://stadia.dev/blog/unity-production-ready-support-for-s... https://developer.android.com/games/develop/build-in-unity https://developer.android.com/games/develop/build-in-unity The anti-GC crowd on the games industry, is no different than the ones that fought adoption of C/Modula-2/Pascal over Assembly, and then fought adoption of C++ and Objective-C over C. Eventually they will suck it up when the major platform owners tell them it is time to move on.

marcinzm 7y ago
>"It's interesting that many games can afford a constant 10x interpretation overhead for scripts, but not a spikey 1% for garbage collection." Why is that surprising? Games are basically about humans predicting things and random spikes prevent that from happening in time sensitive games. Beyond game play implications, I suspect there's also something about jerkiness in movement that bugs human senses.
- sgrove 7y ago
  It's not entirely surprising, but one might imagine a different approach: always allocate a 1% buffer for an unexpected GC. It's not a very satisfactory answer (and there are likely much better tradeoffs to be made), but given the 10x and 1% comparison (not entirely apples to apples though) the comment sounds a bit more interesting.
  - loopback_device 7y ago