[m-dev.] for review: add nancy and wims papers

[Peter Ross]

On 22-Feb-2000, Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> On 21-Feb-2000, Peter Ross <petdr at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> > +<strong>
> > +Towards memory reuse for Mercury
> > +</strong>
> > +<br>
> > +Nancy Mazur, Gerda Janssens and Maurice Bruynooghe
> > +<br>
> > +<em>
> > +Proceedings of the International Workshop on Implementation of
> > +Declarative Languages
> > +</em>,
> > +Paris, France, October 1999
> > +<a href="papers/liveness.ps.gz">Available here (61K)</a>.
> > +<p>
> > +While Mercury allows destructive input/unique output modes which direct
> > +the compiler to reuse memory, use of these modes is very cumbersome for
> > +the programmer. Moreover it does not fit the declarative programming
> > +paradigm where the programmer doesn't have to worry about the details of
> > +memory management.
> 
> With all due respect, I don't agree with some of the wording there.
> I don't agree that the use of unique modes is [always] "very cumbersome".
> Nancy, Gerda, and Maurice can of course write what they like
> in their papers, but I don't think we should endorse these statements
> on the Mercury web site, lest they be taken as the "official Mercury
> line" on unique modes.
> 
> I would prefer it if "is very cumbersome" was changed to "can be cumbersome".
> 
> I also think it would be better to avoid implying that "the declarative
> programming paradigm" means that programmers don't have to worry
> about the details of memory management, because that it turn might
> imply that since Mercury is a "declarative" language, Mercury
> programmers never need to worry about memory management.
> So I would prefer it if the last sentence above was changed to
> "In most situations, it would be nicer if the programmer didn't have
> to worry about the details of memory management."
> 
Done.
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