Yesterday I explained my problems with garbage collection. I don't think garbage collection is bad or any, I just think it isn't being used properly. GC was invented in the late 50's for LISP, the first of high level programming languages. Lambda calculus required that the memory is managed by the system. Having freed the programmer from memory management, Lisp and is brethren enabled the development of true high level features such as dynamic typing, higher-order functions, closures, macros and continuations. These are exactly the feature that give those languages their incredible power.
That is what doesn't make sense in Java and derivatives: those really powerful features are missing in Java. Java is mostly lacking the features that absolutely require a GC. Guy Steele once said "We were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp". Considering the conservativeness of the industry it's understandable they stopped halfway (the step from C to C++ was even smaller). That kind of makes Java a middle level language; a watery compromise that fails to offer the best of both worlds.
Both high and low level languages have their niches, but what about the middle level languages? My intuition tells me their proper niche should be way smaller. It's hard to say what will be Java's successor, but I'm pretty certain of two things. It will not be a Java derivative and it will take the second half step, if not more.
No comments:
Post a Comment