[Python-Dev] Linus on garbage collection

[Stefan Behnel]

Mark Shannon, 06.05.2011 18:33:
> skip at pobox.com wrote:
>> Antoine> Since we're sharing links, here's Matt Mackall's take:
>> Antoine>
>> http://www.selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial-devel/2011-May/031055.html
>>
>>> From that note:
>>
>> 1: You can't have meaningful destructors, because when destruction
>> happens is undefined. And going-out-of-scope destructors are extremely
>> useful. Python is already a rather broken in this regard, so feel free
>> to ignore this point.
>>
>> Given the presence of cyclic data I don't see how reference counting or
>> garbage collection win. Ignoring the fact that in a pure reference counted
>> system you won't even consider cycles for reclmation, would both RC and GC
>> have to punt because they can't tell which object's destructor to call
>> first?
>
> It doesn't matter which is called first.

May I quote you on that one the next time my software crashes?

It may not make a difference for the runtime, but the difference for user 
software may be "dead" or "alive".

Stefan