[fpc-devel] Suggestion: reference counted objects

[silvioprog]

On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 8:02 AM, Chriss Kalogeropoulos <
iz.iznogood at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Why would anyone want something like that? Both languages have interfaces
> that can be used for auto reference counting and they also provide us with
> a very powerful abstraction mechanism.
> This also adds overhead on the performance (and locking calls) which might
> be important in some cases like embedded devices.
>
> The fact that embarcadero added this feature unconditionally is a huge
> mistake IMHO unless they needed it for some compatibility reasons with java
> for android or iOS or just marketing, I don't know. If someone knows any
> other reason please post it on the list.
>
Yes. Embarcadero thinks in productivity. See the new IDE of them, it is
extremely productive.

Unfortunately, who doesn't modernize, tied in old concepts, can lose your
market/product/space/people to your competitors, IHMO. :-/

> It's the same bad decision they made with the zero based strings, at least
> the used a switch for that.
>
> The only gain I can see from that is that with objects someone can use
> reference counting and still benefit from some aggressive optimisation like
> inlining which is not possible for interfaces. The same with simple
> properties that they need getter and setter methods in interfaces that
> cannot be optimized but in objects it might be possible or they can access
> the data member directly.
>
> In my opinion this is a very small gain compared to the huge change in the
> language semantics that you propose.
>
> Chriss
>  Στις 20 Σεπ 2014 1:41 μ.μ., ο χρήστης "Hans-Peter Diettrich" <
> DrDiettrich1 at aol.com> έγραψε:
>
>> Fabrício Srdic schrieb:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> In platforms with managed code (.NET, Java), objects are automatically
>>> freed by the memory manager / garbage collector.
>>>
>>> Would not it be interesting to have a similar feature in FPC?
>>>
>>
>> AFAIK some Delphi XE made TObject itself managed, by reference counting.
>> It would be easy to introduce the same feature in FPC, so that no special
>> base class would be required. Like with extended RTTI a decision should be
>> made, whether managed objects should be enabled or disabled by default.
>> Afterwards automatic management can be turned on or off for every single
>> class or object individually.
>>
>>  For example, through a root class where its objects are counted by
>>> reference, like the TInterfacedObjects. Thus, the programmer would be free
>>> from having to manually release objects.
>>>
>>
>> In practice it turned out that the automatic destruction of objects still
>> requires assistance of the coder, in many cases, in all languages with
>> garbage collection. I.e. a destructor (or finalizer) still is required to
>> prepare an object for subsequent destruction.
>>
>> IMO it's sufficient to use Interfaces for all objects that should be
>> subject to garbage collection.
>>
>> DoDi
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> fpc-devel maillist  -  fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org
>> http://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> fpc-devel maillist  -  fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org
> http://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
>
>


-- 
Silvio Clécio
My public projects - github.com/silvioprog
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freepascal.org/pipermail/fpc-devel/attachments/20140920/e043b7e1/attachment.html>