[self-interest] simplicity

[Ian Woollard]

Steven Shaw wrote:

>I wonder what makes most resources unlike memory?
>
It's a very different emphasis.

There's a heck of a lot more bytes than copies of any other resource.

That means you don't need to be quite so paranoid about releasing 
memory- holding up deallocating an object for seconds, minutes or days 
may not matter at all. Failing to deallocate a semaphore for that long 
is likely to damage the system, perhaps fatally.

> Maybe it's that most 
>resources are held for short periods of time (although they say the same 
>about memory...). Probably it's more something to do with the number of 
>references to a resource. If anyone knows the answer please chime in.
>  
>
Memory is often allocated/deallocated at extremely high rates. That 
means it *has* to be efficient. Other resources rarely call for the same 
degree of performance, but do need to be deallocated promptly.