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Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?

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On 11/3/2025 2:29 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Nov 2025 14:05:12 -0600, BGB wrote:
> 
>> Also, absent additional analysis steps or similar, and thus code
>> complexity, full lexical scoping is prone to rapidly leak memory.
> 
> You mean, you need to put call frames on the heap, not the stack? And
> that will expose any lack of robustness in your memory-management
> scheme?
> 

Yes.

Minimal memory management: Don't bother with GC;
Minimal handling of lexical closures: Just put the frames of the heap, 
capture them if a closure is created, don't bother with case of closure 
not being created.

But, this is a bad scenario, as it results in an explosively bad memory 
leak...


> By the way, Python is clever enough to only put referenced outer-level
> variables within the closure.
> 

Yes, but:
Detecting which variables are captured, or whether or not there is 
capture or non-capture, is the "additional analysis steps" thing...


Likewise, the cheaper option is using a per-frame flag for 
capture-vs-non-capture (frame is freed if the "frame was captured" flag 
is not set). Still though, this is more code complexity than not using 
lexical scoping in the first place.


Like, dynamic scoping doesn't need frames that may or may not be 
captured, can just put all of the variables onto a stack and push/pop 
this stack position per-frame.


>> This is a non-issue with dynamic scoping, even if, potentially,
>> using dynamic scoping as the default is itself a foot gun (in terms
>> of semantics).
> 
> This sounds like a “I could implement it much more efficiently if I
> didn’t have to do it correctly” kind of argument ...

It is cheap and simple...

But, one thing it is not, is semantically equivalent to lexical scoping.


Some of my past languages had both lexical and dynamic scoping (with 
lexical as the default). This can make more sense.

But, as noted, the goal in the case of this interpreter was to use less 
code, and probably would have needed to spend maybe an additional 300 
lines of code or similar to have added support for lexical scoping (that 
wouldn't just immediately leak all the RAM).

...

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Thread

What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-10-31 06:48 +0000
  Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-10-31 13:28 +0100
  Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-10-31 08:17 -0700
    Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2025-10-31 22:47 +0000
    Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-01 06:26 +0000
    Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> - 2025-11-03 14:05 -0600
      Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-03 20:29 +0000
        Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> - 2025-11-03 14:55 -0600
          Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-03 23:10 +0000
            Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> - 2025-11-04 12:02 -0600
              Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-04 20:32 +0000
      Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-11-03 15:56 -0800
    Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-27 21:11 -0300
      Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-08-28 04:42 +0000
        Write Once, Run Anywhere (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-28 16:43 -0300
          Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-08-28 22:37 +0000
            the history of Java in Android (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-28 20:27 -0300
              Re: the history of Java in Android (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-08-29 01:30 +0000
                Re: the history of Java in Android (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-29 15:24 -0300
                Re: the history of Java in Android (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-08-29 21:57 +0000
            Python deliberately breaking backward compatibility (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-28 21:03 -0300
              Re: Python deliberately breaking backward compatibility (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?) Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2026-08-28 18:10 -0700
                [meta] Date-formats in postings (was Re: Python deliberately breaking backward compatibility (was Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language?)) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2026-08-29 06:39 +0200
              Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-08-29 01:42 +0000
      Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2026-08-28 09:59 -0700
  Re: What’s Your Least Favourite Programming Language? Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-27 20:09 -0300

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