4
jassole
22d

Garbage collection incentivizes shit and cuckold programmers. Change my mind.

Reason is basically, it's easy to design a bad architecture, potential bugs are just delayed and waiting to happen later. There are still resources like databases, whose management is more or less like memory that you never learn to do properly because of GC

Comments
  • 1
    disagree.

    you learn to clean up after you thoroughly the moment your app crashes production due to a memory leak when creating thumbnails.

    or you're the kind that never learns it, and therefore will never be seen writing code in an old-tier language without GC (due to obvious reasons)
  • 5
    Easy to use tools allow idiots to slap something together that superficially appears to work but is riddled with bugs.

    But they do not cause good programmers to produce bad work. In fact, a good programmer will produce better work with easier-to-use tools than they would with something like C.

    Not sure where cuckoldry comes into it though. I'd have thought an old-school C programmer is more likely to be cuckolded because when he goes down a five-day rabbit hole trying to optimise some obscure thing and forgets to eat or wash, there's a risk his wife will feel neglected.
  • 3
    Yeah, I disagree as well. GC has It's place. It's not a one-off replacement, it hurts performance and produces larger binary files, but it also reduces boilerplate memory code in many places and allows you to work on business logic rather than memory management, custom allocators and fixing bugs that inevitably will arise no matter how godlike you are as a programmer.

    Yeah, it makes our work more democratized and more people that have little idea what they are doing can code, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, because they will learn, and if they wont then they will replace the low-code roles that none of us really want to do anyway.

    And on the other hand, where peak performance is required you will still find open positions for good ol' C and C++ because paradoxically hard-to-read, black magic pointer arithmetics code is the fastest code, and that's a Skill that's sometimes still necessary (just look at the current LLM boom)
  • 0
    And manual memory bugs are so obvious? 🤡🤡
  • 0
    @devRancid yes Clown. With languages like rust, very easy to trace what holds long lived object. With GC, people tend to use it for other stuff like connection pools, while you have to treat it as if you were manually managing memory anyway.

    But I can tell you only write toy programs
  • 0
    @Hazarth Anything beyond a toy console program, that isn't just running pure computations, you still have to treat things like database, file handles, network objects like you manually manage memory.

    And try talking to the GPU, you are right back writing code that have to manage GPU memories. Ever wonder why don't have GC in GPGPU computing libraries?
  • 1
    As a sysadmin using critical software stacks I don't want to be bothered with puritism of a program. I want it to clean up its own asshole if it shits it's pants as @b2plane does all the time.
  • 1
    There is more than just GC or manual memory management.
    There is also automatic reference counting like in Objective-C and Swift or shared (?) pointers in C++.
    And there is Rust, which is like a hybrid of manual and automatic memory management: You are forced by the compiler to do it correctly but it‘s somewhat manual.

    But even with GC, I disagree with your claim.
    While I agree that it‘s beneficial to have knowledge of how (manual) memory management works, GC doesn‘t necessarily hurt code quality.

    It does hurt performance though. But that’s completely irrelevant for most applications and use cases.
  • 4
    @jassole But that's exactly what I'm saying. There's a place and time for GC languages, same as there is place and time for low level memory management languages.

    It's short sighted to dump on GC languages with the argument "programmers dum now, we must memory". They don't threaten non-gc languages and even if we agree that GC makes it easier even for bad coders to do decent work, that's still good for the rest of us, cause we get to do more interesting work.
  • 3
    I can see right through you, Mr. Joesole: you intend to spouse low level gang attitude in a vain attempt at attaining archwizard status among the unwashed masses of relentlessly wanking schmucks.

    However, we at the arcane association of schizoid mother fuckers have standards, despite our crippling crack cocaine addiction, and for your repeated attempts at edginess that only result in immediately antagonizing the general public, we find you *not* worthy of joining our ranks.

    In order to redeem yourself, and obtain the rank you seek within our circle, you will have to complete a series of trials, the first of which includes a duel to the death in the astral plane. If you can survive this encounter and those that follow with an unbesmirched asshole, then I shall __personally__ consider your next application for promotion.

    Until then, your ambitions must be left on hold. Dismissed.
  • 0
    @Hazarth I don't see a place for GC language other than incentivizing lazy ass programmers like the ones here. Which app is compute only these days?
  • 1
    @Lensflare Yes I am aware, I specially mean tracing GC in this context. Memory is not the only issue you need to solve.

    All those other management styles you mentioned work for not just memory, but resources too.
  • 1
    @Liebranca Suck some Garbage Collected dick bitch
  • 2
    @jassole Lazy programmers are the best, like lazy mathematicians or lazy engineers. Most innovation happens because someone couldn't be arsed to do something manually.
  • 1
    @jassole Oh? Is that constipation, I presume? Don't worry, we'll drop you by the infirmary so your debilitating condition can be treated before the aforementioned deathmatch begins.

    There is nothing to be ashamed of, dear. It is only natural for one *not* to desire shitting their pants when sent into the arena to prove their worth, but such is your fate.

    Now make battle preparations and get your spells in order, the battle shall commence shortly. And may God have mercy on your soul.
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