Re:Why is Rust difficult?
by vardump on Monday January 22, 2018 @06:33AM
(#16203584)
> A GC typically makes memory usage and execution latency non-deterministic, or at the least very hard to analyze.
You could say same about malloc and free. Not deterministic at all either. Memory fragmentation is a huge issue as well, and can bring down the whole system.
Typical GC (not all flavors) has a huge advantage on microcontrollers: you gain ability to compact heap. No more fragmentation.
That said, mostly I try not to dynamically allocate anything in firmware or kernel drivers. Whenever possible. Sometimes I write my own specialized allocators. For example a simple wait free allocator fast and rugged enough to call from an interrupt service routine.
You could say same about malloc and free. Not deterministic at all either. Memory fragmentation is a huge issue as well, and can bring down the whole system.
Typical GC (not all flavors) has a huge advantage on microcontrollers: you gain ability to compact heap. No more fragmentation.
That said, mostly I try not to dynamically allocate anything in firmware or kernel drivers. Whenever possible. Sometimes I write my own specialized allocators. For example a simple wait free allocator fast and rugged enough to call from an interrupt service routine.