How far can stack [LIFO] solve do automatic garbage collection and prevent memory leak ?

[John Passaniti]

On Aug 20, 6:51 pm, Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You can see an example of lists in my novice package (in the list.4th
> file):http://www.forth.org/novice.html
> Also in there is symtab, which is a data structure intended to be used
> for symbol tables (dictionaries). Almost nobody uses linked lists for
> the dictionary anymore (the FIG compilers of the 1970s did, but they
> are obsolete).

Thanks for pointing this out, Hugh.  After reading the code in your
novice package and symtab, I am confused:  With code of that caliber
and the obvious stunning intellect behind it, why hasn't everyone
adapted your awesome symtab for symbol tables instead?  Any why hasn't
there been an effort to translate symtab into other languages so users
outside of Forth can also experience the sheer speed and hyper-
efficient use of memory and CPU?  Let me say I find it refreshing that
a great programmer like yourself doesn't bother with stupid fads like
testing algorithms against large data sets and measuring performance
relative to competitive algorithms.  That's all academic nonsense.
The only test and measurement anyone needs are the comments at the top
of symtab where you state your algorithm is better.  You clearly
wouldn't have written that if it wasn't true.

> Write some programs! Are we not programmers?

Amen!  All this academic talk is useless.  Who cares about things like
the big-O notation for program complexity.  Can't people just *look*
at code and see how complex it is?!  And take things like the years of
wasted effort computer scientists have put into taking data structures
(like hashes and various kinds of trees) and extending them along
various problem domains and requirements.  Real programmers don't
waste their time with learning that junk.  What good did any of that
ever do anyone?!

Thanks Hugh for a refreshing stance on what it means to be a
programmer.