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From: robison@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Xerox PARC's Cedar (garbage col
Message-ID: <5200041@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 21 May 89 20:53:00 GMT
References: <41977@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Lines: 22
Nf-ID: #R:oliveb.olivetti.com:41977:m.cs.uiuc.edu:5200041:000:823
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!robison    May 21 15:53:00 1989


Garbage-collection lets the machine do some of the programmer's work,  
but some people argue that its more efficient to let the programmer do
this work.  I suspect that eventually garbage collection will eventually
be considered an almost indispensable feature except for special purpose
machines (such as toaster controllers).  Remember that similar arguments
of ``efficiency'' have been made for:

	code generation (let the programmer pick op-codes)

	virtual memory (let the programmer do overlays)

	type checking (let the programmer find the bugs)

Of course an occasional assembly language statement, page control,
or type cast is nice, but by default I want the machine to do the work.

Arch D. Robison
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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