[Haskell-cafe] Why functional programming matters

[Evan Laforge]

> > A real time incremental gc would be really cool.  Some people claim
> > they exist, but which languages have one?
>
> Define "real time".  I'll note that, after all the mud that's been
> slung at Java, you've been able to get low-pause-time parallel GC in
> Java for years and years, and can get "real time" GC for various of
> your favorite definitions of that term if you're willing to look a
> little.

I'd personally settle for soft real time, like "very rarely takes more
than n ms in a single gc run" so that if you are calculating samples
or something chances of getting a dropout are low.  I think most
people would be happy there.  So Java sounds like it would do for me
there.  Unfortunately it has all the rest of that language attached to
it :)