Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: jeff@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Why garbage collection?
Message-ID: <DLC45w.CAD.0.macbeth@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <rvillDL4v3n.I8r@netcom.com> <19960114T050927Z@arcana.naggum.no> <rvillDL6u4q.KHL@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 16:51:32 GMT
Lines: 27

In article <rvillDL6u4q.KHL@netcom.com> rvill@netcom.com (Richard Villanueva) writes:
>Erik Naggum (erik@naggum.no) wrote:
>
>: there is no "long pause" in modern systems.  numerous brilliant minds have
>: worked on garbage collection for many years.  that is nearly a guarantee
>: that you will need to have in-depth knowledge of the prior art in garbage
>: collection techniques to be able to provide useful suggestions.
>
>I realize how unlikely it is that I would break new ground on the subject.
>Hence my puzzlement.  A friend of mine who has worked in support of AI
>researchers for many years told me that garbage collection was one of the
>obstacles that was hindering the acceptance of Lisp.  This got me wondering.
>I take it that he must be ill-informed.

That (that he's ill-informed) does not follow.

GC _is_ an obstacle that hinders the acceptance of Lisp.

That doesn't mean it does so *for good reasons*.

(There may be some real-time applications where GC is still a
problem, though a Lisp program should be able to avoid generating
garbage if it's necessary to avoid it.  But most of the time,
at least, modern garbage collectors are fast enough.)

-- jd

