PeterLudemann, 25 days ago

@dabeaz
"Context Manager" or "'with' statement" are the preferred terminology?

dabeaz, 25 days ago

@PeterLudemann I have no idea. Are we just talking about garbage collection? Or how to program?

PeterLudemann, 25 days ago

@dabeaz
Wikipedia says that RAII was invented by the same guy who invented C++, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I think it's "computers are good at keeping track of things, especially if you help them a bit (e.g., with the 'with' statement) and people are terrible at keeping track of things, so let's repurpose one thing (lifetimes of variables) as another thing (resource allocation)".

dabeaz, 25 days ago

@PeterLudemann Honestly, I think my objection is not so much the thing, but the introduction of fancy terminology for the thing.

PeterLudemann, 24 days ago

@dabeaz
"Other names for this idiom include Constructor Acquires, Destructor Releases (CADRe) and one particular style of use is called Scope-based Resource Management (SBRM)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_acquisition_is_initialization
Although it doesn't mention Go's "defer".

BTW, I'd like to combine Python's 'with' and 'for', e.g.:
for line with open(...):

dabeaz, 24 days ago

@PeterLudemann I like both of those far better.

vy, 23 days ago

@dabeaz @PeterLudemann i write some c applications that never call free because they do some work and exit

dabeaz, 23 days ago

@vy @PeterLudemann Aren't you worried about what others might think?

PeterLudemann, 23 days ago

@vy @dabeaz
I'm sure that saves several microseconds.

vy, 23 days ago

@PeterLudemann @dabeaz it's done to simplify coding and not waste time on tedious bookkeeping - when possible not to.

dabeaz, 23 days ago

@vy @PeterLudemann But aren't you worried about preserving semicommutative transitivity?