Xcode Update Gives Objective-C Garbage Collection

William Henderson writes "That's right, if you haven't read it for yourself yet, Objective-C '2.0' now supports garbage collection. I foresee a great, huge, gigantic debate about to ensue, and a lot of java-heads sparking 'I told you so'. Why not start it here on slashdot?"

Comments

Re:Hacks and Novices Rejoice!

[profet]

"Garbage Collection is cool cuz you don't have to, like, remember to delete stuff"

Shudder.

posted wirelessly via abacus and smoke signals

Apple innovates...

[cortana]

-lgc

I kid, I kid! :)

Re:NOOOOOOO #@$#$@

[shobadobs]

In contrast to malloc/free implemented as linked list traversal, GC takes O(1) time to allocate, and O(n) time when it runs out of memory; malloc/free always takes O(n) time.

First of all, even dumb mallocs do not 'always' take O(n) time.
And comparing GC to a craptardic mallocation strategy is like comparing any sorting algorithm against bubble sort.

Re:Great..now to persuade those C++ hotheads!

[Bill Dog]

As a C++ hothead, I think it would be great if GC was added to C++, contingent of course on it being added according to the spirit of C++, which is you don't pay for what you don't use. I.e. make it available as an option in the language, but not always activated. I'll also add, C++ programmers are used to and favor deterministic destruction, so a GC for C++ should be able to be triggered, and the language should specify that it doesn't return until all objects that could be freed at that point are. We like control, and guarantees. If it were implemented that way, I might even use it.