Re: Array optimizing problem in C++?
Jerry Coffin wrote:
My experience was that the difference in speed was measurable, though
rarely if ever enough to care about. As far as development goes, my
experience hasn't matched yours. While finished programs using GC worked
well enough for me, I found it slower and more difficult to develop them
and be certain they were really working correctly.
Odd. Most people have the exact opposite experience - by not having to worry
so much about memory release, and by the reduced likelihood of memory leaks
due to improperly managed garbage collection, most programmers find GC-based
environments to be faster and easier to develop for. This is also the common
claim made by the expert writers in software development, that having the GC
managed by the platform eases development and reduces difficulty and bugs.
What is it about your experience that makes it harder for you?
The point is that it can't manipulate the lifetime. As the examples in
another thread showed, in most languages you're free to treat an object
as dead as soon as you can prove that nothing accesses that object any more.
In Java you are relieved of the pressure to make that decision. Once nothing
accesses the object any more, the JVM proves it to itself.
In C++, if a dtor has any observable side effects, the object must
be destroyed precisely when prescribed, and when that happens, you might
as well collect its memory as well, since you certainly can't use the
object after its destruction.
Huh? Doesn't invoking a destructor on a C++ object release its memory by the
very definition of what a destructor does? What am I misunderstanding?
--
Lew