automatic reclaiminig of limited resources (was Re: [Python-Dev] Product iteration)

[Neil Hodgson]

> Don't fall into the trap of believing that refcounting is a pure win!
> JPython and Vyper and the MS runtime aren't doing "real gc" just because
> they want to irritate people <wink>.  There are tradeoffs here, and new
> Python code is probably more interesting to MS than old Python code.

   This aspect of GC is, however, irritating some C++ programmers who are an
important MS customer group. This can be used to block C# and 'managed' C++
inside .NET with the argument "C# is /less/ safe because it is harder to
ensure clean up so you'll leak resources".

   The base problem is that the only resource GC knows about is memory.
There should be a way of attaching other resources such as file handles and
data base connections to a similar mechanism.

   Neil