Quote from: gmaxwell on December 25, 2014, 10:26:13 AM

Quote from: grau on December 25, 2014, 09:45:58 AM

Yes, that "safe" subset of C++ is emulating a simple and restricted reference counting runtime by hand. Certainly doable.

That isn't the case. Yes, reference counting is one tool, in that box but it has considerable costs. Most things are handled by RAII. And then there is unique_ptr... "By hand" is also perhaps misleading... in that, for better or worse, the developer themselves doesn't see the machinery under the hood any more than they see boundary checking in Java.

RAII and unique_ptr implement a reference counting store where the (implicit) use count can be 1 or 0, right?
"By hand" does not mean copy and paste. The solutions you use are likely best attainable in the C++ environment.

My point is, that better support for program correctness is available elsewhere and should be used if permissible. When permissible is open for discussion, but I do not buy that the answer would be never.

I even suspect that a language and runtime that is safer to exclude side effects, implicit inputs and aids reasoning on correctness of algorithms is a better choice even for consensus definition.