Re: Some Laws

After a long battle with technology, Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis_at_SystematicSW.Invalid>, an earthling, wrote:
> fOn 24 Sep 2004 03:10:19 GMT in comp.databases.theory, Christopher
> Browne <cbbrowne_at_acm.org> wrote:
>
>>In the last exciting episode, Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis_at_SystematicSW.Invalid> wrote:
>>> On 23 Sep 2004 15:05:07 -0700 in comp.databases.theory,
>>> AaronJSherman_at_gmail.com (Aaron Sherman) wrote:
>>>
>>>>"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message news:<ubmdncUAr--WSszcRVn-rg_at_comcast.com>...
>>>>
>>>>> Yeh. The guy who tried to convince me that Java introduced the automatic
>>>>> garbage collector. I think he had never heard of Lisp.
>>>
>>> Or BASIC!
>>
>>Except that BASIC's "string collection" system was WAY less
>>sophisticated; it traditionally uses something about as sophisticated
>>as reference counting.
>
> I was thinking more of the "commercial" heavily extended BASICs on
> mainframes and minis in the 1970s-80s. OTOH given the interpretive
> runtime environment, and lack of circular references, they didn't need
> anything other than reference counting.

Well, Java's use of GC is vastly more derivative of that of Lisp than like that of BASIC.

After all, Guy Steele, one of the principals behind Java, was one of the prominent participants in the ANSI Common Lisp committee, as well as (if memory serves) being involved with R*RS standards for Scheme.

He wasn't prominent on any BASIC standards committees...

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