Bradley M. Kuhn writes:
> > Java is portable and gives us OO, but it's slow and ugly.
>
> I am probably the biggest proponent of the "use Java to implement Perl"
> camp.
Java is only somewhat portable.
> One concern that I have about the data structure design thus far (and I
> believe I wrote an RFC about this) is that we should try to resist the
> temptation to "talk in C" too soon. Most of the ideas I have seen thrown
> around are filled with C-isms. Of course, that's totally reasonable, if it
> helps people think about the issues. However, I would like it to be
> possible for a programmer of language Foobar to take the specification of
> the data structures and implement them directly in Foobar without too much
> trouble. The fewer C-isms in the high-level spec, the easier such a task
> will be.
That's a worthy goal. We should keep it in mind. And if we design
the data structures in this fashion, then the programming language
choice is somewhat minimised.
> I would like to note that GCC has actually switched to using garbage
> collection to manage its *internal* data structures rather than a
> traditional C memory management system. The GCC team has been pleased with
> both the performance and ease of use.
>
> The argument is: "Computers do a better job at memory allocation than humans
> do by hand, so let the computer do it!"
>
> I think we should give this idea some serious consideration.
I agree.
Nat
