Lambda the Ultimate

This isn't a real problem. Both Java and .NET are available on Mac. And if they weren't, it wouldn't really matter because major multiplatform applications simply aren't written in Java or .NET (by applications, I mean applications - not servelets, scripts, in-house database front-ends, etc which are plentiful on Java and C#).

Why aren't major applications written in Java or .NET? Because Java, the Sun Vendor Agenda Language, is seen as the bastard stepchild language on Windows. And .NET, the Microsoft Vendor Agenda Language, is avoided by people writing multiplatform applications. So, ultimately, everyone avoids using Vendor Agenda Languages for major applications.

So it really doesn't matter.

Also bear in mind that the implicit memory management of Java and C# provide a productivity gain for developers, of something like 20-30%. This isn't anything fundamental, and if porting a .NET language to Linux or Mac turns out to be a major effort, then that 20-30% can easily be lost.

I'm not sure whether it's a relevant point, but several of the main developers of LLVM, including Chris Lattner, now work at Apple. It appears that LLVM has decent support for GC..

From the Apple GCC manpage:

       -fobjc-gc
           Enable garbage collection (GC) for Objective-C objects.  The
           resulting binary can only be used on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and
           later systems, due to additional functionality needed in the (NeXT)
           Objective-C runtime.

           When the -fobjc-gc switch is specified, the compiler will replace
           assignments to instance variables (ivars) and to certain kinds of
           pointers to Objective-C object instances with calls to interceptor
           functions provided by the runtime garbage collector.  Two type
           qualifiers, "__strong" and "__weak", also become available.  The
           "__strong" qualifier may be used to indicate that assignments to
           variables of this type should generate a GC interceptor call, e.g.:

                     __strong void *p;  // assignments to 'p' will have intercep
tor calls
                     int *q;            // assignments to 'q' ordinarly will not
                       ...
                     (__strong int *)q = 0;   // this assignment will call an in
terceptor

           Conversely, the "__weak" type qualifier may be used to suppress
           interceptor call generation:

                     __weak id q;      // assignments to 'q' will not have inter
ceptor calls
                     id p;             // assignments to 'p' will have intercept
or calls
                       ...
                     (__weak id)p = 0;   // suppress interceptor call for this a
ssignment

I was aware that ObjC was getting garbage collection. This could be viewed as a stop-gap measure, or "good-enough" for Apple.

However, I was hoping to get more feedback (since I am honestly curious about this) about the object models provided by the likes of GObject, the Objective C runtime, and even Qt, and their suitablity in supporting higher level languages. Can that be bolted on, or does it have to be designed in in the first place?

So in some sense, what's being asked for is a return to the days of the Lisp Machine, when the entire OS, from device drivers to UI, was in something other than C or assembly language. That's a thought that I can get behind, but who knows if/when we'll ever see the like commercially again?

While I can't speak for the commercial world, this is the vision being pursued by The Institute for End User Computing, Inc.

We believe that to truly fullfil the promise of the Personal Computing Revolution, and get the many enabling technologies that have been stagnating in our labs over the last three decades into the hands of ordinary End Users, we need to finally bite the bullet and stop trying to develop multi-platform solutions that run under today's infrastructure.

Now is the time to create a new legacy free platform (at least at the os/application level — we will still support your old Data going forward) based on everything we know today that puts the best programming language technology at its core. We need to be able to code everything in a unified multiparadigm metalanguage with a transparent human-friendly notation so anyone writing code for the new platform will be able to read and work with everyone else's code.

If we can make it easier for you to express your best ideas in such a new language than it would be to port your existing code in a legacy language and if we can offer a critcial mass of enabling technologies to make the new platform useful as a research tool, then with luck industry will adopt it!

We plan to start ramping up our research efforts in the New Year, so we would be thrilled to hear from any potential volunteers interested in the language design project as well as any perspective members for our Board of Directors. Just drop me at note at:

executive hyphen director at ieuc dot org

I've found programming in ObjC (without the GC) a rather nice middle ground between fully garbage collected systems and explicit memory management like in C++. One of the major gripes I have with C++ is that you can't safely write a function that returns a pointer to an object as the result. You can make the pointer a smart pointer, yes, but smart pointers don't cross modules via virtual interfaces (COM, plugins and such)

The auto-release pool approach is a very good pattern to let me write more natural and correct code with less memory management hassle than C++, though slightly more than a full GC.