| From: | Jim Peters |
| Date: | 25 Sep 2000 at 13:22:02 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: XML and Java, a uncharted territory? |
On Sun, Sep 24, 2000 at 03:02:00PM -0500, Rudi Chiarito wrote:
> Of course, still as of today a lot of programmers misplace or forget
> free()s, so it must mean that maybe manual management is not the ideal
> solution. I prefer a slightly slower program that manages memory
> correctly to a faster program that once in a while frees the wrong
> region of memory...
I agree - coding in Java, and using this kind of garbage-collection is
the ideal way to avoid loads and loads of problems, crashes and so on.
It is perfect for all kinds of desktop apps.
The trouble is that Amiga is best known for all those high-performance
time-critical apps, like games, video, sound-trackers, and so on. If
Java can be used to create these, we can expect a huge reduction in
development time. However, if GC gets in the way, everyone will be
back to coding in C or assembler.
The whole thing with mark-and-sweep is that it means putting off an
important job until some time later when hopefully there will be a
lull. Trouble is that with many Amiga-style applications, there isn't
going to be a lull for the next 5 minutes, perhaps. This means either
allocating the GC a slice of time every frame (hopefully enough), or
waiting until memory is full and everything stops dead.
I've ordered the SDK now, so a lot of my questions will be answered
very soon, I hope. I'm wondering to myself if Tao's GC is
per-application, or for the whole machine ? I would love to code
time-critical stuff in Java, and I was looking at ways to get more
control over it on Linux, but unfortunately the learning curve was too
steep for, say, putting ref-counting GC into the GCC Java-compiler.
Maybe things can be easier on the Tao virtual machine.
You say you'd be happy to trade some speed for the security of safe
memory management. Well, I'd be happy to trade some memory for
increased control over the GC process through ref-counting. Just
depends on what you want and need.
I'm going to try and stop talking now until the SDK has come and I've
read all the documentation ! Then I'll be a bit more clued up on the
possibilities.
Cheers -
Jim