Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!exodus!rbbb.Eng.Sun.COM!chased From: chased@rbbb.Eng.Sun.COM (David Chase) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Smart pointers and stupid people (was: garbag Message-ID: <7142@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 1 Feb 91 00:07:26 GMT References: <4127@osc.COM> <3344@lupine.NCD.COM> <4175@osc.COM> <70353@microsoft.UUCP> Sender: news@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM Distribution: comp Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 31 You didn't put the most important part in all caps like you should have. People seem not to appreciate this point. In article <70353@microsoft.UUCP> jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK) writes: >The important design choice is: Are my classes going to use GC or not? >Using GC or not leads to pervasive changes in how one writes and thinks >about software. ... >The exact details of what GC scheme to use are relatively unimportant design >issues. GC or not GC is the real question. >What the C++ community needs to be working on is ways to abstract-out >issues of GC and memory management from other aspects of class design, >so that class libraries are not "hard-wired" to one or another memory >management or GC schemes. If I read this as "abstracting decisions of GC or not-GC from my class design", it seems like you have just contradicted yourself. If I write an interface that expects the assistance of a garbage collector, it will be different from (simpler than) the one I would have written without the garbage collector. I don't see how I can abstract on that, or why (given a garbage collector) I would want to -- it would take time, and not taking that time is one of the big plusses of using a garbage collector. Perhaps I misread your intention and we really agree, but in short -- C++ and C+++GC are different languages. It's just an accident that they use the same syntax. David Chase Sun