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Re: should we Go now?

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> writes:
> 	[Cross-posting also to news:comp.lang.perl.misc and
> 	news:comp.lang.c, as Go seem to be positioned as a successor to
> 	both the "system programming languages" (C) and the "Web
> 	programming languages," of which Perl is one I'm familiar
> 	with.

I'm using Perl for 'system programming' and 'Go' won't replace it (it
also won't replace C) for the simple reason that it uses another "I
swallowed the Kool Aid and it was sure tasty!" runtime environment:
Deterministic object finalization based on lexical scopes is not only
a very powerful and easy-to-use way to manage all kinds of resources,
not just memory, it is also a useful programming paradigm beyond
resource management. As an example, in a certain program, I'm using
some classes to facilitate construction of (Linux) kernel IPset
objects. These provide interfaces for adding data to such an object
(either 'CIDR addresses' or port numbers) and construct the actual
kernel object during execution of DESTROY[*]. That's the sensible way
to make this happen automatically because if the object is going away,
new members won't be added to the set anymore.

Tracing garbage collectors, OTOH, are an exercise in academic
masturbation 'hard-coded' around a couple of assumptions about the
execution environment of the original Lisp implementation (AFAIK, an
IBM 704 machine) such as 'no multiprogramming, no networking, single
userspace application in total control of the environment, pointers
are not data' which essentially haven't been true anywhere since (it
was demonstrated that general purpose computers can run Lisp code
faster than 'Lisp machines' 20 years ago) and offer no real advantages
except that they can solve toy problems specifically invented to
demonstrate the usefulness of these memory management algorithms
(something people who presently can't use some important application
written in Java because it is leaking file descriptors very likely
don't care about).

I spent the last 1.5 weeks mostly with writing Java code and having to
write code which explicitly release a 'lock objects' managed outside
of the JVM instead of creating a class instances of which will release
their locks 'at the right time' during object destructions felt pretty
much like 'stone age coding' to me (NB: I didn't research how
finalization works in Java and may assumption that it is coupled to
the garbage collector may be wrong). perl can do better than that.

[*] I'm aware that this is another feature in the process of becomeing
'documented away' because it is considerd to be politically incorrect
to provide it.

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Thread

should we Go now? Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-02-24 10:47 +0000
  Re: should we Go now? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-02-24 13:40 +0000
  Re: should we Go now? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-02-24 16:37 +0000
    Re: should we Go now? Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-02-24 17:02 +0000
      Re: should we Go now? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-02-24 19:38 +0000
        Re: should we Go now? Nils M Holm <news2009@t3x.org> - 2013-02-25 07:23 +0000
          Re: should we Go now? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-02-25 17:30 +0000
      Re: should we Go now? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-02-24 21:42 +0000
        Re: should we Go now? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-02-24 22:26 +0000
        Re: should we Go now? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-02-25 01:04 +0000
        Re: should we Go now? Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-02-25 13:32 +0000
          Re: should we Go now? Ben Morrow <ben@morrow.me.uk> - 2013-02-25 15:28 +0000
            Re: should we Go now? Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com> - 2013-02-25 17:54 +0000
      Re: should we Go now? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-02-25 01:29 +0000
        Re: should we Go now? Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-02-25 13:12 +0000
  Re: should we Go now? Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> - 2013-02-24 17:04 +0000
  Re: should we Go now? Bjoern Hoehrmann <bjoern@hoehrmann.de> - 2013-02-24 18:24 +0100
  Re: should we Go now? Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2013-02-25 17:01 -0800

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