Python complaints

[Gareth McCaughan]

James Logajan wrote:

> Oh yeah? Well yer mudder wears army boots! Seriously though, the price I am
> talking about has absolutely nothing to do with simplicity. It has to do
> with the fact that languages such as Java that have "true" GC are
> non-deterministic in their execution times because GC can cause execution
> pauses in the VM at unpredictable times. This makes Java unacceptable for a
> large number of real-world applications that I have been involved in lately.
> ("I'm sorry, but your 911 call can not go through for another 20 seconds
> while our Java VM garbage collects 1GB of memory on the switch.") I have
> recommended Python over Java in at least one environment because of Python's
> deterministic approach to memory management. Had Python not had that, I
> suppose we would have gone with some other scripting language or even
> designed our own (gak!).

Garbage collectors have got a *lot* better since the days when
GC meant half-second pauses waiting for the machine to sweep
through all its memory. Let alone 20 seconds.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
sig under construction