If you think you are famous, then what can I say? I'm the guy with the silly dogmatic attacks, as you call it, which are neither silly nor dogmatic.

I am a professional C++ programmer for 10 years now. I can't tell you how much time is spent in dealing with memory management in C++. Writing big and complex applications in C++ is a very difficult, time-consuming, mind-boggling, temper-stretching tasks in the programming field.

If you ask why don't I move to another language, I'll answer that it's not my choice. I program in whatever tools I am given. It's not my decision.

If you want a debate on C++, then please use informed and educated arguments, not 'people don't like it' replies like Stroustrup.

The only reason the C++ committee has not made garbage collection the top priority item in their list is because they are dogmatic. They think that memory should be managed manually, without ever giving any persuasive argument on why it should be so.

They say that C++ is used in embedded systems that can't have GC. Ok, I say 'make it optional'. There are plenty of ways to do that.

They say that C++ is a system's programming language. Fine, I don't see anything that prevents C++ from having a garbage collection. Boehm's collector works, it just need some type information help to make it efficient, and it's only the compilers that can do that.

I really don't see any argument that can hold against having optional garbage collection in C++. What I see is a big list of very big and complex applications that have great problems with wild pointers and buffer overflows and occasionally crash, and they all have been made with C++.

This rant should not be thought of as inflammatory or anything like that. It's just an informed post about the state of programming and the C++ programming language. I see many flaws in it, and I would like to see them corrected. It affects my everyday life, and of course the lives of many other people, since a memory error can have multiple consequences in many levels, including people being fired for not managing complex projects adequately (yeap, I've seen that in my career as well).

Yeah — if you're inside for long enough to come up with one full paragraph of opinions every 365 days, then obviously there's something wrong with you.

Sadly I'm completely clueless as to anything higher level than classes in C++ and really just use it as C with more flexible scope. So I have no opinion as to the real substance of this conversation.

But, ummmm... didn't you think you were famous whenever you last appeared in a thread here with Matt Smith? There's an entire school of platform games that probably wouldn't have existed but for him.

I'm with Thomas Harte :S

Do you think that I care too much about C++ and I should care less? is that what you mean by saying that?

Well, C++ has give me and many other people enough headaches. Unlike others, I care, and I want to see the situation improved.

I understand that. Everyone says that, actually. No one examines the actual arguments. I am mr Nobody, while Stroustrup is famous, has appeared numerous times in famous web sites and other media and has written books on the subject. So I must be wrong.

Well, somebody really famous said:

My opinion that C++ should have garbage collection has already been ridiculed in numerous sites.

Right now it is violently opposed.

But I don't give up. The 3rd step is close! :-)

We are talking about C++ having optional garbage collection.

It's very difficult to use Boehm's gc with C++. It requires many hacks. There are STL issues, linking issues, DLL issues, initialization issues etc. I've tried it, that's why I know.

But that's why I say it should be optional.

I respect that, but I need it. I hope you can understand that different people may have different needs.

I'm not sure anyone really knows, as the original thread is about rvalue and move semantics, not Garbage collection.

Agreed. But you are still advocating that the C++ committee should take this as their priority task and I can't understand why.

I appreciate that. And of course I understand that different people have different needs.

[edit]
As if this was the first time on a.cc threads go nutty?

I guess it depends on how you interpret the OP.
From being "famous" to discussion about C++ and GC, I would say it is nutty, at least out of topic

Although with the rant and links, I guess GC is right on topic, in a way

I don't doubt axilmar's experience and/or knowledge, but I still think that those who want to use CG with C++ should make one themselves or use whatever is available and not try to push it into a standard. Better yet, use C#, Java or whatever has a GC to begin with.

Size of project IMHO doesn't matter when it comes to handling memory. It's basically the same all the way anyway. Unless of course you need to do some dynamic magic because of heavy usage of RAM memory.

ps.

I am being nice, always

If C++ were the only programming language available to me, I'd be off playing golf somewhere. It seems to me that C++ is more and more becoming a language for elite language nerds. From the article:

template <class T, class A1>
std::shared_ptr<T>
factory(A1&& a1)
{
    return std::shared_ptr<T>(new T(std::forward<A1>(a1)));
}

I'm sure to a veteran the above code makes sense, but I look at it and think "Is this really what programming has come to?"

Why two ampersands? Because one was already taken. So the next semi-related feature gets 3. Brilliant.

I don't care enough to be as nearly informed on the topic as, say axilmar, so my opinion really isn't worth anything from a technical perspective, but it appears that he wants to address the root of the problem as opposed to addressing a symptom with some more obscure syntax. (Which is good.)

It's the classic programmer's excuse. When asked why something doesn't work well or is too complicated, you get some technical excuse instead of "it's not designed properly." Give me a circle, and I'll shove this square through.

The thing that perplexes me is how anybody can defend the C++ language. At a surface level, it would appear that something like D provides basically the same features at a fraction of the syntax.

Then you have "VM" languages like C# that are almost beautiful to work with. What can you do in C++ that you cannot in the others? I'm talking about results; not nerdy little coding tricks.

The more features that C++ gets, the fewer people that will understand it, and the fewer people who will use it. It means you'll be able to make a lot of money in 10 years supporting legacy C++ applications, but all new development will be in other languages.

Depends on the garbage collector. Some will free it immediately when no one else is using it, some periodically, some progressively in the background, some all at once only when memory is exhausted, etc. It is completely dependent on implementation (which can be argued as a potential downside, since you now have more nondeterministic run times than usual; of course, if it is configurable, or well documented, it usually isn't a problem.)

The major benefit of garbage collectors is that you can have lazy destruction of objects (both memory and anything else; which is both an advantage and a disadvantage for different resources). You don't have to keep track of everyone holding on to the pointer of an object; the garbage collector does this for you. This removes the need for shared pointers, for example. While it's true GC's do promote some degree of laziness (e.g. data structures that simply let objects fall to the GC instead of explicitly cleaning up after itself), it makes life much, much easier. And if the GC is good enough to not be completely obnoxious about when/how/why it frees memory, it is essentially a non-issue for all but the most performance critical sections.

Of course, depending on the garbage collection scheme, RAII is kinda b0rked when you have a non-deterministic destruction time. Garbage collectors fix problems with memory resource leaks, but cause problems elsewhere. It's all fine and dandy that you can't leak memory, but if you can still leak open file handles, network sockets, locks, etc. the problem becomes somewhat more complicated. But provided both are possible (RAII to perform automatic cleanups, and a really nice GC), it can make a lot of programs much, much easier to code.

Move semantics are great whether you're using a GC or not.

This blanket statement is false. What you should say is:

To say the industry shares your stance is silly. It only takes 1 person in the industry to disagree with you and the statement is false. Not only do I disagree with you, the vast majority of #C++ on freenode also disagree.

Let me get this straight... Your solution to the same problem is to double your memory footprint? I fail to see this as a solution... are you sure you understand what move semantics really fixes?

Bjarne himself said the code was not meant for the publics' eyes. The code you referenced is designed to illustrate the need in a way veteran C++ coders could easily see. These code chunks are needed to convince the committee to approve changes.

It was not designed as a model of C++ to non-C++ coders... Try to give it the benefit of the doubt.

It's the most logical syntax I can think of... its fitting given its similarity to references.

Bjarne is not the kind of man to pick an agenda and make up strong arguments for it. He is the kind of man who finds strong arguments and creates an agenda around them.

Thats what makes and keeps C++ so great.