[TriLUG] Re: Managed languages (was .NET development on Linux)

[Tanner Lovelace]

Joseph Tate said the following on 6/17/04 9:46 AM:

> Have fun with your pointers!  I'll be shifting any new development work 

Pointers are not that hard.

> to a language in which I don't have to worry about memory management. 

Have you looked at smart pointers in C++? (see the Boost library)

> C#, though I despised it at first, may fit the bill.  VB .Net doesn't 
> seem like a real language to me.  Java, though I prefer it, is not well 
> supported under Linux (unfortunately, but gjc 3.4 should change that). 
> Perl and PHP are great, but can't be compiled (without expensive third 
> party tools).  Python is collapsing in on itself (according to some whom 
> I respect).  I do know that I'm tired of tracking down memory leaks.
> 
> If there's a language that I should be learning, let me know.  I'm 
> taking a look at XUL right now to see if that is useful.  Am I giving 
> Python an unfair judgement?  Is there a memory management plugin for 
> C/C++ (though that would defeat the purpose)?

Please don't put C and C++ together for something like this.  They
are worlds apart in what they can do.

You can use garbage collection in C++ without any problems.  All of
the standard containers let you specify an allocator and there are
garbage collected versions you can use with that.  You can also
use smart pointers that will take care of themselves for you.
There are way too many options for C++ to talk about here.

Cheers,
Tanner