Hacker News Reader

Comment by FuckButtons | Hacker News Reader

Exactly, the Venn diagram of programmers using c/c++ and programmers who can use a garbage collector for their workload is two circles.

View on HN

Definitely not true. I've been using Boehm GC with my C/C++ programs for decades — since the 90s, at least.

Does this also hold true when you look at codebases that others also worked on, rather than just you?

A lot of C++ programmers use C++ and garbage collection daily because their C++ compiler uses a tracing garbage collector.

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gccint/Type-Information.html

Which only appears relevant if you disregard critical differences like this:

The GCC garbage collector GGC is only invoked explicitly. In contrast with many other garbage collectors, it is not implicitly invoked by allocation routines when a lot of memory has been consumed. [1]

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gccint/Invoking-the-garbage-c...

Except for:

- Me. I'm a C++ programmer.

- Any C++ programmer who has added a GC to their C++ program. (Like the programmers who used the web browser you're using right now.)

- Folks who are already using Fil-C.

I’m also a C++ programmer, I can’t even use half of the C++ stdlib for real time thread work, I certainly can’t use a GC.

There are many C++ programmers and we are not the same!

My original foray into GCs was making real time ones, and the Fil-C GC is based on that work. I haven’t fully made it real time friendly (the few locks it has aren’t RT-friendly) but if I had more time I could make it give you hard guarantees.

It’s already full concurrent and on the fly, so it won’t pause you

∃ ≠ ∀

A few important, production C++ codebases do use tracing mark/sweep GC.

Most famously: Chrome does (Oilpan), GCC does (or did), Unreal does (for core game state heaps), I think WebKit also does.

Except if they happen to work with .NET, Unreal, V8, COM/WinRT,...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com