Re: [GD-General] Compile times

[Thatcher U. <tu...@tu...>]

On Dec 17, 2002 at 10:21 -0800, Mick West wrote:
> > Behalf Of Thatcher Ulrich
> > 
> > On Dec 16, 2002 at 11:46 -0600, brian hook wrote:
> > > introducing a degree of non-determinism in my code (smart pointers),
> > 
> > Note: the behavior of ref-counted smart pointers is 
> > completely deterministic.  (That's one of the nice things 
> > about ref-counting, compared to other GC approaches.)
> 
> Well, all code is completely deterministic, if you want to get picky.

When you compare reference counting to mark/sweep GC or multithreaded
code, there's definitely a meaningful and practical distinction, even
if you're not picky.

Anyway, I personally think "smart pointers as an implementation of
handles" is pretty worthwhile and doesn't violate Brian's original
objection, which is that he doesn't know for sure when an object will
be freed.  I.e. you still have a manager somewhere that keeps a list
of smart pointers, so nothing can go away until the manager says so.
Then you put some checks in the manager to find and punish people who
hold references when they shouldn't be (e.g. at level-shutdown time).
So really it's a way to automate some of the discipline that Brian is
advocating.

-- 
Thatcher Ulrich
http://tulrich.com