[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/30/2022 3:49 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-30 19:40, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 1/30/2022 1:26 PM, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>> BS.  If/when memory is allocated it needs to be deallocated when it 
>>> is no
>>> longer needed.  Same goes for pushing things on the stack -- push 
>>> data on
>>> and pop data off.  Assembly language programmers are generally just 
>>> better
>>> at those sorts of things because the results of mucking up are not 
>>> pretty.
>>
>> ...
>> push
>> ...
>> pop
>> ...
>>
>> is manageable.
>>
>> So is:
>>
>> ...
>> allocate
>> ...
>> deallocate
>> ...
>> return
>>
>> The problem arise with the more complex flows where the allocating
>> routine pass the pointer on to something and return expecting some
>> other code to deallocate.
> 
> That is usually because of languages with very poor data ownership 
> models, which usually is a side effect of object oriented languages.
> 
> Complex flow itself isn't really creating any problems. It's all about 
> knowing who owns the data. But when you don't even know what code might 
> execute, known what data even exists, or who owns it, becomes a murky 
> pool. GC to the rescue (if you like calling that a rescue).

If we consider uncertainty about who owns data to be complexity then ...

Arne