←back to thread

271 points mithcs | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.018s | source
Show context
cachius ◴[] No.45953162[source]
A recent superpower was added by Fil aka the pizlonator who made C more Fil-C with FUGC, a garbage collector with minimal adjustments to existing code, turning it into a memory safe implementation of the C and C++ programming languages you already know and love.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45133938

https://fil-c.org/

replies(3): >>45953284 #>>45953390 #>>45954377 #
762236 ◴[] No.45953390[source]
Why would I want to run a garbage collector and deal with it's performance penalties?
replies(4): >>45953453 #>>45953598 #>>45953991 #>>45961132 #
jerf ◴[] No.45953598[source]
Because about 99% of the time the garbage collect is a negligible portion of your runtime at the benefit of a huge dollop of safety.

People really need to stop acting like a garbage collector is some sort of cosmic horror that automatically takes you back to 1980s performance or something. The cases where they are unsuitable are a minority, and a rather small one at that. If you happen to live in that minority, great, but it'd be helpful if those of you in that minority would speak as if you are in the small minority and not propagate the crazy idea that garbage collection comes with massive "performance penalties" unconditionally. They come with conditions, and rather tight conditions nowadays.

replies(6): >>45953687 #>>45953716 #>>45953741 #>>45953976 #>>45959310 #>>45960864 #
Phil_Latio ◴[] No.45953741{3}[source]
> Because about 99% of the time the garbage collect is a negligible portion of your runtime

In a system programming language?

replies(3): >>45953871 #>>45953930 #>>45955348 #
pjmlp ◴[] No.45953871{4}[source]
Yes, plenty have been done already so since Lisp Machines, Smalltalk, Interlisp-D, Cedar, Oberon, Sing#, Modula-2+, Modula-3, D, Swift,....

It is a matter to have an open mindset.

Eventually system languages with manual memory management will be done history in agentic driven OSes.

replies(2): >>45954791 #>>45960404 #
HumanOstrich ◴[] No.45960404{5}[source]
"Agentic driven OSes"? Sounds like AI hype babble.
replies(1): >>45962553 #
1. pjmlp ◴[] No.45962553{6}[source]
Hype or not, that is what is being pushed

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsof...

https://www.klover.ai/apple-uses-ai-agents-10-ways-to-use-ai...

replies(1): >>45962707 #
2. HumanOstrich ◴[] No.45962707[source]
What does this have to do with system languages with manual memory management going away?