5 ms·
This is a silly argument, though. GC has a clear de facto meaning. If you say "Garbage Collection" in a room full of programmers, they're going to assume the tr
by KerrAvon 3y ago
This is a silly argument, though. GC has a clear de facto meaning. If you say "Garbage Collection" in a room full of programmers, they're going to assume the traditional meaning, as seen in Lisp and Java, where you have something capable of automatically collecting cycles without programmer intervention.
I've seen people claim malloc and free are GC. And sure, you can get there, but it makes the term utterly meaningless.
- pjmlp 3y agoOnly if they are the kind of those that call themselves "engineer" without a professional Software Engineering degree. Apparently you aren't even aware there are Lisp and Java implementations with reference counting algorithms for garbage collection.
- Dylan16807 3y ago> Apparently you aren't even aware 1. That's a pretty ungenerous interpretation of "as seen in". 2. Are people expected to know about those specific implementations or they're a bad programmer? If that's your intent then screw off. Also that sounds like a broken way to do "Java" without qualifiers. For Lisp, eh, you can even use a bump allocator if you want but that doesn't mean everyone should consider it every time they talk about Lisp.
- pjmlp 3y agoYes, that is exactly my intent, thank you very much.
- Dylan16807 3y agoDo you realize how vanishingly few people are aware of those? Your threshold for expertise is self-centered and wrong.
- pjmlp 3y agoAs mentioned, such things are part of any Software Engineering degree worth taking.
- Dylan16807 3y agoNo, "reference counted java implementation" is not part of all of those. Please have perspective. And again, "as seen in [language]" doesn't mean that's the only way to implement it. If I talk about global locking "as seen in python" it doesn't mean I'm unaware of non-GIL python implementations.
- pjmlp 3y agoYes it is, by having a sound compiler design section. If you are aware of non-GIL Python, you would say "as seen in CPython", otherwise it just proves the point of not being able to distiguish between implementations and language definitions.
- Kranar 3y agoNot where I work. Where I work people are very well aware that referencing counting is a form of garbage collection. Any memory management abstraction that simulates an infinite amount of memory is a form of garbage collection, including a system that never frees memory (the so called null collector).