Cross platform: How they do it?

[Kurt Wall]

In a 1.3K blaze of typing glory, Andrew L. Gould wrote:

[deletia]

> I have a question for the programmers on the list:  It's my understanding that 
> Perl, Python and Java (and Ruby?) manage memory allocation for the 
> programmer.  Does this impact the programmers' ability to control the 
> efficiency of the application?

Not necessarily. Garbage collected languages appeal because they handle
memory management behind the scenes, but, IMHO, their overall "efficiency," 
which is a rather a crude metric, is affected by other considerations. 
I think the efficiency of the underlying algorithms (as measured and
expressed using so-called "big O" notation), has a greater impact on
an application's overall efficiency. For example, a bubble sort is
easier to write than a Shell sort, but a Shell sort is much faster
because it uses fewer operations than a bubble sort to sort the same
set of data.

That said, if a language has a porrly written memory manager, this *will*
affect the "efficiency." 

But, people build entire academic careers studying memory management
in programming languages.

Kurt
-- 
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train.