Re: following up on speed

[Michael Vanier <address@hidden>]

> Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 23:44:20 -0400
> From: Daniel Weinreb <DLWeinreb@attbi.com>
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> Cc: Mike Salib <msalib@mit.edu>, ll1-discuss@ai.mit.edu
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> Ken Anderson wrote:
> 
> >
> > "C programmers should now seriously consider using conservative 
> > garbage collection instead of malloc/free in programs they write." 
> 
> A big theme of the LL1 workshop was: why isn't industry listening to 
> academia? This
> strikes me as an excellent case to study, if anyone has the time and 
> inclination to do so.
> 
> >
> >
> > I think Java and C++ contributed to the acceptance of GC,
> > Java because it had GC, and C++ because it doesn't. 
> 
> On the other hand, I think you'll find that lots and lots of people in 
> industry
> are still quite convinced that GC is a very big price to pay, that GC is one
> big reason that Java is slower than C++ and why you want to use C++ when
> you really care about speed, etc.
> 

I can say that personally I'd probably be using C++ right now if the STL
used conservative GC.  I thought about re-implementing the STL to do this
but I had neither the time, the inclination or the expertise to do so.
Since I don't feel like writing my own container classes using GC in C++, I
decided to use other languages that do support GC natively.  IMO this is a
big obstacle to the continued growth of C++ (whether this is a good thing
or not is another question).

Mike