3 ms·
Sorry, I take GC/RC as a given these days, but yes, the effect this alone has (not needing to write any memory semantic code the vast majority of the time) is r
by netbioserror 2y ago
Sorry, I take GC/RC as a given these days, but yes, the effect this alone has (not needing to write any memory semantic code the vast majority of the time) is revelatory. Especially for any language that compiles to a native executable. Huge performance for very easy-to-write and -maintain code.
- eru 2y agoOh, I agree. It's progress! Any new language these days either has to have automatic memory management (GC or RC), or have a good story for why what they are doing instead is different and worthwhile (like Rust). Or as a third possibility, your new language will get mercilessly mocked. We see similar developments for closures and support for first class functions in general. And my sincere hope is that in the future, other features like sum-types and pattern matching over them will go the same way. The functional programming community pioneered many of these features; but those features aren't restricted to that small corner of our industry. I hope that relations-as-datatypes will see widespread use in the future. SQL shows that relations are good for expressing business logic, and I used them in a Haskell dialect as an internal datatype (unconnected from any database), and the experience was great. There's no reason Python etc couldn't host relations as datatypes, the same way they already host dicts.