Subj : Re: OO compilers and efficiency
To   : comp.programming
From : Jon Harrop
Date : Thu Jul 21 2005 04:07 pm

Rob Thorpe wrote:
> Objects in Java are heap allocated, no matter what they are.  There are
> no stack allocated objects as there are in C++.  This means that the
> heap must take on the roll filled by both the stack and heap in other
> languages.  This means the garbage-collector must waste time cleaning
> up stuff that's gone out of scope that in other languages would be
> dealt with by just moving the stack pointer.
> 
> This means that compared to other languages with GC Java relies more on
> it's garbage collector,

No. I believe many other language implementations (e.g. ocamlopt) work in
the same way but are much faster than Java. I think Java's poor performance
is due to Java implementations failing to optimise common OO patterns.

> and of course it has the extra overhead of GC unlike C++ and C.

GC is often faster than manual allocation and deallocation so it isn't
really fair to call it an "overhead". Indeed, I'd call manual allocation
and deallocation an overhead...

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com

.