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Date:Mon Oct 8 00:00:14 1993 
Subject:Re: Threaded Interpretive Languages 
From:Richard M. Hartman 
Volume-ID:931008.04 

In article <CEItLu.3M7@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> pop@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Robin Popplestone) writes a lot of stuff among which I find:
>Steve Knight who writes applications for Hewlett Packard reckons that, for
>a given effort, he can write a POP-11 program for many applications that
>runs twice as fast as the equivalent C. Being able to use appropriate
>data-structures for the -problem-, knowing that he does not have to worry
>about reclaiming them, a particularly serious problem in an interactive
>program that may run ad infinitem, slowly clogging up its virtual memory as
>it does.

I have yet to be convinced that garbage collection is a requirement
for efficient programming.  I have never found it difficult to decide
when I am done with an object and free() it.  Perhaps if you could
describe a situation where automatic GC is a requirement, and not merely 
a convenience it would help me to understand.

Until then, phrases like "knowing that he does not have to worry
about reclaiming them" merely imply (to me) a lazy develper who 
cannot be bothered to figure out when he is done playing with 
his "toys".  This is NOT meant as a slight to Mr. Knight -- merely
the biased viewpoint of someone who has been malloc()ing & free()ing
for over a decade with very few difficulties who would like to know
just what GC can buy me.

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Lovely to see you again my friend,		|
walk along with me to the next bend.		|	-Richard Hartman	
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in far away forgotten lands,			|
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