> Reference counting is well established. Retain/release is not > reference counting. > > The essential point of reference counting is that the language system > does it for you, you don't have to think about it at all. Most Java > and scripting developers never even learn to think that there are such > things as allocation and disposal. The essential point of plain > memory management is that you have to think about it constantly, and > that the decision actually to free an object (or the research into why > it was freed too early or too late) requires knowledge of the state of > the entire system. > > Retain/release is a middle ground: it's not done automatically, you do > have to think about it, a bit. But it's possible to pull it off with > very limited thought and very simple constraints. But that mental > model is, so far as I'm aware, utterly unique in language design, and > turns out to be startlingly hard to learn, coming in either from a > true ref-counting world (whence you have to learn to think about > something you never before knew existed), or from vanilla do-it- > yerself memory management (whence you have to learn to trust a simple > system for something that has always meant life-or-death, sweaty > palms, and late night aggravation).
Well I have to say. None of that sounds like any fun what so ever. In fact it sounds a little anti-constructive with the amount of time it would take to get anything out the door let alone prototyped to a beta. _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
