Tony Morris

Bitten by mutability. Everytime that happens I wish data structures were immutable, but then it doesn't happen too frequently.

.@dnene when I did all-immutable data structure programming in Haskell I was bitten by memory leaks A LOT. Everything is a trade off.

@ekabanov memory leaks or higher requirements of memory in general ? I'm trying to visualise how immutability could lead to leaks.

@dnene think .substring() in Java and other String leaks. Once you start doing complex thing with clever structures it all goes quantum.

@ekabanov Hmm, not disagreeing, skeptical. a) Functional Data Structures are designed for that usage. b) Did not face such issues w/ Erlang

@dnene Erlang has the most awesome leak protection ever through isolated per process heaps. It can still happen there, but less likely.

@ekabanov Yes but a leak needs an ever expanding hidden black hole where data sinks into & vanishes. How can there be immutable black holes?

@dnene a stack variable holds a reference to a giant-ass list which you only need two elements from. http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-thunk-leak/ …