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Comment by FpUser | Hacker News Reader

GC is very old concept. Nobody was ever prevented from using languages with GC. But as a whole we do not have to move. And frankly the dangers are overblown. My latest C++ product is of decent size and does not use a single explicit allocation. It is there though should I need it.

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How does that deal with stack-allocated data that gets twiddled by some other code expecting that it will be able to do so, where that expectation outlives the actual stackframe itself?

Same way as GC enabled tools. At some level they all rely on massive libraries written in C.

Depends on the OS and if the compiler toolchain is bootstraped or not.

Apparently many forget C was on that role as well.

I am a practical man and will let others fight these holy wars. I take action when the real situation changes. I'll give you this example: on desktop I've always used Delphi and lately Lazarus to develop GUI apps. Basically instead of wasting my resources on endless stream of "how to develop GUI properly" coming from MS and changing every other year ( forgive exaggeration ) all my efforts on that front were to improve the actual products. Zero problems so far. Same on the backend. I do not have complaints from my enterprise clients about my backend servers misbehaving in any ways. If that happen I'll take action. Without it I have better idea about where my business expenses are going. This does not mean that I do not use GC based tools at all. There were few cases when client specifically requested particular toolset. Since they're paying for it I do not mind. When given free reign and this is what happens 90% I do what I believe is right.

So... what is right? What is your preferred toolset?

I think I already answered. Delphi/Lazarus for GUI apps, C++ for backends, JS for browser, Python for maintenance tasks in rare cases when shell scripts become too complex.

This reply makes no sense; GCs don't have to worry about a stale stackframe causing stack-allocated data to go haywire, because they're not using stack allocation to begin with.

> At some level they all rely on massive libraries written in C

What? How does your "C++ product [that] does not use a single explicit allocation" actually manage memory?

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