Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com>: > On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 7:34 PM, Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> wrote: >> Refloops are not to be worried about, let alone removed. > > Why?
Because the whole point of GC-languages is that you should stop worrying about memory. Trying to mastermind and micromanage GC in the application is, pardon my French, an antipattern. > They force the use of the much slower cycle-detecting GC, rather than > the quick and efficient CPython refcounter. Java's Hotspot doesn't bother with refcounters but is much faster than Python. CPython's refcounters are a historical accident that a Python application developer shouldn't even be aware of. > I don't know how other Pythons work, but mark-and-sweep has its own > costs, and I don't know of any system that's both prompt and able to > detect refloops. It's exceedingly difficult (and pointless) to detect cycles in your object structures. Python is going to have to do a GC occasionally anyway. Yes, your worst-case response times are going to suffer, but that's the cost of doing business. > Helping it along means your program doesn't waste memory. Why such a > blanket statement? Because worrying Python programmers with evil spirits (reference loops) leads to awkward coding practices and takes away one of the main advantages of Python as a high-level programming language. Marko -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
