[computer-go] Language

[Christoph Birk]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007, Hellwig Geisse wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-11-14 at 12:30 -0800, Christoph Birk wrote:
>> I write (astronomical) instrument control software in C that
>> runs for days (upto weeks). I call malloc() when I need memory
>> and free() when the particular sub-task is done ... no problem.
>
> Then you are a lucky guy... ;-)
>
> With closures you almost never know when exactly the task is
> done. They can float indefinitely within your system, they can
> get part of other data structures, and last but not least, they
> are cyclical in nature. *I* would have had many problems without
> garbage collection.

Looks like we are living in very different worlds.
I had never even heard of 'closures' (I have never used a
functional language and I just read up on them on Wikipedia :-)

> But I will happily concede that these particular problems may
> play no roll at all in computer Go - except if you decide to
> program in a functional language. Then again, you won't do that
> without a good GC.

It appears that the question of GC is not dependent on the problem
(eg. computer-Go) but on the language you use.

Christoph