Luca's meaningless thoughts

I'll just copy what the home page:

bpython is a fancy interface to the Python interpreter for Unix-like operating systems (I hear it works fine on OS X). It is released under the MIT License. It has the following features:

• In-line syntax highlighting.
• Readline-like autocomplete with suggestions displayed as you type.
• Expected parameter list for any Python function.
• "Rewind" function to pop the last line of code from memory and re-evaluate.
• Send the code you've entered off to a pastebin.
• Save the code you've entered to a file.
• Auto-indentation.

Tired of the clumsy Bugzilla web interface? Meet pybugz, a command line interface for Bugzilla.

An example workflow from the README file:

$ bugz search "version bump" --assigned liquidx@gentoo.org

 * Using http://bugs.gentoo.org/ ..
 * Searching for "version bump" ordered by "number"
 101968 liquidx net-im/msnlib version bump
 125468 liquidx version bump for dev-libs/g-wrap-1.9.6
 130608 liquidx app-dicts/stardict version bump: 2.4.7

$ bugz get 101968

 * Using http://bugs.gentoo.org/ ..
 * Getting bug 130608 ..
Title : app-dicts/stardict version bump: 2.4.7
Assignee : liquidx@gentoo.org
Reported : 2006-04-20 07:36 PST
Updated : 2006-05-29 23:18:12 PST
Status : NEW
URL : http://stardict.sf.net
Severity : enhancement
Reporter : dushistov@mail.ru
Priority : P2
Comments : 3
Attachments : 1

[ATTACH] [87844] [stardict 2.4.7 ebuild]

[Comment #1] dushistov@----.ru : 2006-04-20 07:36 PST
...

$ bugz attachment 87844

 * Using http://bugs.gentoo.org/ ..
 * Getting attachment 87844
 * Saving attachment: "stardict-2.4.7.ebuild"

$ bugz modify 130608 --fixed -c "Thanks for the ebuild. Committed to
portage"

Meet Tucan:

Tucan is a free and open source application designed for automatic management of downloads and uploads at hosting sites like Rapidshare.

Python (at least CPython) uses reference counting, and since version 2.0 it includes a cycles freeing algorithm. It uses a generational approach, with 3 generations.

Python makes a distinction between atoms (strings and numbers mostly), which can't be part of cycles; and containers (tuples, lists, dictionaries, instances, classes, etc.), which can. Since it's unable to find all the roots, it keeps track of all the container objects (as a double linked list) and periodically look in them for cycles. If somebody survive the collection, is promoted to the next generation.

I think this works pretty well in real life programs (I never had problems with Python's GC -long pauses or such-, and I never heard complains either), and I don't see why it shouldn't work for D. Even more, Python have an issue with finalizers which don't exist in D because you don't have any warranties about finalization order in D already (and nobody seems to care, because when you need to have some order of finalization you should probably use some kind of RAII).