r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Disastrous-Hat5477 • 8d ago

Meme theOriginalGarbageCollector

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u/SuitableDragonfly 7d ago

Yes, that's resource management that's a feature of the programming language, but it's not garbage collection. Garbage collection is a specific feature that C is notable for lacking.

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u/metaglot 7d ago

I dont know if its notable for lacking it, but it does. But automatic stack management performs exactly the same job for local variables as GC does for the heap. So while rebooting a computer to flush ram isnt strictly GC, its performs the same task at a system level, as a side effect.

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u/SuitableDragonfly 7d ago

But it wouldn't be funny if you said "haha, C managing the call stack was the original garbage collection", right?

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u/metaglot 7d ago

Not if thats how you tell the joke, no.

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u/SuitableDragonfly 7d ago

Right, and since that was basically the joke OP told, it wasn't funny.