[rescue] Mozilla Firefox

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 @ 12:23 -0400, Dave McGuire said:

> On Apr 23, 2004, at 12:04 PM, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> >Far more complicated allocations are quite common, and a lot more
> >difficult than just calling free() on a single reference.
> >
> >A lot of people screw this up.
> 
>   It's easy to screw up, but attention to detail is what computer work 
> is all about.

So is using tools to eliminate redundancy, the basic and most common
feature of computational machines.

That's why we have compilers.  

I don't see a fundamental difference between managing registers and
stacks and managing memory.  C automates the first two...

I'm sort of indifferent to it after years of writing C, but I can see
how things could be improved without becoming horribly inefficient.

>   Think of what it'd be like if someone were to start selling a kit for 
> people who have "ham fists" to be able to start making wristwatches.  

I'm not talking about the incompetent though.

I'm talking about good programmers who are human enough to make
mistakes.

Even the most expert C programmer *will* mess this up.  It's not a
matter of if, but when.

There are changes to C which would cut down on this problem a great
deal, and some of them are related to my wish-list which I said would
give me most of the OO I want without fundamentally altering C.

For the more complex programs with serious memory management issues,
you may find that even expert C programmers will do a better job
using a higher level of memory management.  It really depends on the
application, and also on various project pressures.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than
the sage amongst his books For to you kingdoms and their armies are mighty
and enduring,  but to him they are but toys of the moment to be overturned
by the flicking of a finger." - anonymous     ]