3 ms·
There is this old chestnut about “null garbage collectors”: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180228-00/?p=98125 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldn
by MarkSweep 2y ago
There is this old chestnut about “null garbage collectors”:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180228-00/?p=98125 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180228-00/?p=98...
> This sparked an interesting memory for me. I was once working with a customer who was producing on-board software for a missile. In my analysis of the code, I pointed out that they had a number of problems with storage
leaks. Imagine my surprise when the customers chief software engineer said "Of course it leaks". He went on to point out that they had calculated the amount of memory the application would leak in the total possible flight time for the missile and then doubled that number. They added this much
additional memory to the hardware to "support" the leaks. Since the missile will explode when it hits its target or at the end of its flight, the ultimate in garbage collection is performed without programmer intervention.
- jvanderbot 2y agoRapid disassembly as GC. Love it. Have you heard the related story about the patriot missile system? https://www.cs.unc.edu/~smp/COMP205/LECTURES/ERROR/lec23/node4.html https://www.cs.unc.edu/~smp/COMP205/LECTURES/ERROR/lec23/nod... Not a GC issue, but fun software bug.
- gpderetta 2y agoUntill the software is reused for a newer model with longer range and they forget to increase the ram size. But of course that would never happen, wouldn't it?