🚀 go-pugleaf

[comp.lang.smalltalk removed since it appears to have nothing to do
 with this topic except that it has GC]

   Joe Kraska (jkraska@bbn.com) wrote:
   >I agree with this setiment whole-heartedly! I recently interviewed a
                      ^^^^^^^^ you mean sediment, right?
   >graduating cs major, who claimed to be 'very good' with C programming.
   >This naturally led me to probe into his knowledge of dynamic memory
   >allocation, because mastery of dynamic memory is what seperates good
   >programmers from bad ones in C.
   >
   >My first question was 'show me how to allocate an array of pointers to
   >strings'. His response was, 'huh?'. 

His first response should have been: "C doesn't have strings."

					After asking a few more questions
   >it turned out he understood dynamic memory not at all. Amazing to me
   >how you could get through a CS program in todays world without learning
   >linked lists, hash tables, b trees, ad nauseum. But so it was.

Implementing data structures such as these doesn't pose particularly
hard problems relating to by-hand memory management.  Building a large
system is where the problems arise.  (Not that that excuses his/her
ignorance.)

   >There are, of course, many working professionals out there who use C
   >but really don't understand dynamic memory. Maybe JAVA is for them. The
   >dumb-down language of the 90's.

What is your point?  It is obvious that a machine can (be programmed
to) do memory management with fewer errors, and (less obviously) in
some cases faster than humans.  In my opinion that makes someone who
choses a language with automatic memory management smart, not dumb.
(Many of your fellow BBNers use such languages, by the way.)