> I can agree with that when comparing with plain C code. But reference-counting in C++ and Objective-C leads to exactly the same problem as with managed code. What saves C is that reference-counting there leads to a lot of boilerplate and bugs.
You've already been greyed out, but I agree 100% with what you said.
That's my main beef with this kind of bi-weekly discussion where people always put C and C++ in the same bag.
I rarely, if ever, make memory management errors in C. The model can't be more simple. If you don't explicitly allocate, you don't have to care about it (in the general case, it is on the stack and will disappear when exiting a function, anyway you also don't have to care about those implementation details, just do as if it disappeared with scope). If you allocate something (on the heap), then you free it later. Malloc(), free(), end of story. Okay, don't keep pointers to areas you will free or realloc, of course. Any function which returns pointers tomemory chunks are always to be treated as malloc'ed, those objects can never be on the stack and never have a fancy automatic management of any sort.
Now almost each piece of code I wrote in Objective-C contained memory errors/leaks. Be cause 1. I didn't grasp the more complicated, less deterministic (so to speak) models and the jargon well 2. you (well, I) never know right away which type of management was used for the object that some function returned, you have to check the doc and pray it is clearly written 2.b you have to keep that information in mind until the moment when you'd like to release the said object in order to release what should be released and not release what is/will be/has been automatically released now/later/sooner/whoknows.
And I don't even talk about the abomination that is Objective-C++, where I drowned in muddy waters.
You've already been greyed out, but I agree 100% with what you said.
That's my main beef with this kind of bi-weekly discussion where people always put C and C++ in the same bag.
I rarely, if ever, make memory management errors in C. The model can't be more simple. If you don't explicitly allocate, you don't have to care about it (in the general case, it is on the stack and will disappear when exiting a function, anyway you also don't have to care about those implementation details, just do as if it disappeared with scope). If you allocate something (on the heap), then you free it later. Malloc(), free(), end of story. Okay, don't keep pointers to areas you will free or realloc, of course. Any function which returns pointers tomemory chunks are always to be treated as malloc'ed, those objects can never be on the stack and never have a fancy automatic management of any sort.
Now almost each piece of code I wrote in Objective-C contained memory errors/leaks. Be cause 1. I didn't grasp the more complicated, less deterministic (so to speak) models and the jargon well 2. you (well, I) never know right away which type of management was used for the object that some function returned, you have to check the doc and pray it is clearly written 2.b you have to keep that information in mind until the moment when you'd like to release the said object in order to release what should be released and not release what is/will be/has been automatically released now/later/sooner/whoknows.
And I don't even talk about the abomination that is Objective-C++, where I drowned in muddy waters.