5 ms·

Games are 0.00001% of software? Web browsers? Operating systems?

• theamk 11mo ago
  Large parts of web browsers (like entire Firefox' UI) is written in javascript already Operating systems _should_ use GC languages more. Sure, video needs to have absolute max performance... but there is no reason my keyboard or mouse driver should be in non-GC language.
  • BenoitP 11mo ago
    Most programs should be written in GCd languages, but not this. Except in a few cases, GCs introduce small stop-the-world pauses. Even at 15ms pauses, it'd still be very noticeable.
    • xigoi 11mo ago
      There are GC algorithms that don’t require stopping the world.
    • baranul 11mo ago
      Might want to read up on Ponylang. GC'd FOSS language without the stop-the-world pauses, demonstrating that it's possible. Should also be pointed out, that there are a number of proprietary solutions that claim GC with no pauses. Unfortunately, if coming from more common C-family languages, Ponylang may require more to get used to the actor model and different syntax.
  • oskarkk 11mo ago
    > Large parts of web browsers (like entire Firefox' UI) is written in javascript already Is UI even a large part of Firefox? I imagine that the rendering engine, JS engine, networking, etc, are many times larger than UI.