> a sophisticated enough compiler should have enough knowledge from analyzing the source code to "automatically" know the type of memory management classification for any variables. The programmer shouldn't have to manually annotate them.
This might be possible, but there are a few big problems with it:
1. We'd be throwing separate compilation out the window. What makes separate compilation work is that the types are fully deducible for each function without knowledge of the functions that call it. In our system, this requires some amount of manual annotation.
2. Systems programmers often need to know whether allocation is happening; they don't want a compiler doing it behind their back. For example, in interrupt or async signal handling context, you can't allocate. A language that implicitly allocates is not usable for such contexts.
3. When you get an error relating to memory management—for example, a borrow check error—it's important that the programmer be able to diagnose what happened and fix it. Without explicit annotation, it's notoriously harder to report type errors—the programmer has to try to reconstruct what the compiler was trying to do.
This might be possible, but there are a few big problems with it:
1. We'd be throwing separate compilation out the window. What makes separate compilation work is that the types are fully deducible for each function without knowledge of the functions that call it. In our system, this requires some amount of manual annotation.
2. Systems programmers often need to know whether allocation is happening; they don't want a compiler doing it behind their back. For example, in interrupt or async signal handling context, you can't allocate. A language that implicitly allocates is not usable for such contexts.
3. When you get an error relating to memory management—for example, a borrow check error—it's important that the programmer be able to diagnose what happened and fix it. Without explicit annotation, it's notoriously harder to report type errors—the programmer has to try to reconstruct what the compiler was trying to do.