Forum Overview :: Rants :: Re: Also (Mini-rant)

[quote name="Tansin A. Darcos (TDARCOS)"][quote name="Oom Shnibble"]A lot of universitied don't teach C/C++ or Pascal opting instead for Java or C#. This means they don't know how to clean up after themselves in code. This is bad. I also do not like Garbage Collectors. They are dark fucking magic that are not to be trusted. [/quote] I dislike Java and C# because I think they encapsulate some of the worst practices of the C and C++ language. There are a lot of things there such as the way certain constructs are used that I think are excessively complicated and can lead to badly designed applications. But I have to disagree on one thing. I believe the numbers show that one of the biggest productivity increasing capabilities for a programming language is the language's handling of memory management as well as automatic garbage collection. Freeing programmers from having to manage memory themselves is a big improvement. For example, Pascal's original memory management required MARK/RELEASE where you created a pointer and used MARK to save that pointer. Then you did whatever you allocated with NEW, then you had to remember to use RELEASE on the pointer you MARKed. Now that Object Pascal supports proper memory operations with NEW/DISPOSE, the language handles garbage collection and reallocation of memory as needed. [quote name="Oom Shnibble"]Yes, I know that this attitude is akin to some medieval distrust of black cats or some shit but I choose to be irrational about this. Especially since a lot of developers don't know that they need to dispose of unmanaged resources in C#. [/quote] This is exactly the sort of reason I prefer Pascal to C or any of its derivatives, the way Pascal manages dynamically allocated memory is clear and straightforward, and you don't have things running around unless you ask for them. You NEW a chunk of memory, when you finish you DISPOSE and the system handles the bookkeeping. You can DISPOSE of an item at any time and it doesn't matter that there are other items allocated later on, the system will take care of what's in use and what isn't. To put it bluntly, as long as you shit (DISPOSE) what you eat (NEW), you don't have to worry about the plumbing, it will all take care of itself! [/quote]