[fpc-devel] Suggestion: reference counted objects

[Boian Mitov]

Every memory management system has a manual part, even the M$/Java GC has 
element of it (the dreadful Disposable pattern to name one).
There is a huge difference however. ARC requires in general less coding for 
the same result.
Less code in general is cheaper to develop, debug, read and maintain. It is 
a simple business formula actually (and as businessman I need to calculate 
this).
There is also the old saying "What is the only line of code where you can't 
have a bug?" with the obvious answer - "The one you don't write." ;-) .
So on the balance sheet ARC is a cheaper and in general easier to maintain 
form of manual memory management, and my experience with it (Mainly 
interfaces - almost everything we do is interfaced nowadays), confirms that 
100%.

With best regards,
Boian Mitov

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Mitov Software
www.mitov.com
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-----Original Message----- 
From: Marco van de Voort
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2014 3:58 AM
To: FPC developers' list
Subject: Re: [fpc-devel] Suggestion: reference counted objects

In our previous episode, Hans-Peter Diettrich said:
>
> IMO Weak references should be reserved for users who accept possible
> consequential problems, but should never be used in standard libraries.
> At least I'd suggest to make weak references subject to an compiler
> switch, so that every user has a chance to disable them in case of 
> trouble.

IMHO weak references trade one manual memory system in for a different
manual memory system.

The hard part of manual memory systems, figuring out how a complex dynamic
structure deallocates (that is usually tackled by having a bit of design and
thought go into it), remains.
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