[bitc-dev] Retrospective Thoughts on BitC

[David Jeske]

Matt - Thanks for the very well-worded and clear response. Of course we
can't speak for Shap, but I can see those two well-reasoned perspectives
well in your explanation. I don't know if you anticipated this or not, but
I have one objection..

On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 10:56 PM, Matt Oliveri <atmacen at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you want a typesafe runtime to replace C, then you are essentially
> saying we should write all programs on top of some fixed runtime.
>

Yes. That runtime would evolve over time, but yes.


> In other words, as I see it, you are asking for compromise.
> But you have argued yourself that essentially people turn to C (live
> dangerously) when they find the compromise option to be unacceptable,
> currently because of GC pauses.
>

I object to this. I do not believe people turn to C to avoid compromise. If
so they would always turn to assembler. I believe they turn to C because it
offers an improvement in programmer productivity in exchange for a
linear-performance degregation.

The problem with GC pausing is not that it is a compromise, that problem is
that it's non-linear. IMO, by eliminating this non-linearity, we would
provide a runtime which was strictly preferred in all but the most extreme
cases. (i.e. the same situations that turn to assembler today)
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