[gclist] Name that hypothesis

[Charles Fiterman]

At 12:40 PM 12/3/96 +0000, you wrote:
>What is the name of the following hypothesis?
>
>	"Most references in a system point backwards in time, i.e. from
>	 younger objects to older objects."
>
>In the GC community we all know this, and many of us use it
>frequently, but we don't seem to have agreed on a name for it.

How about "We remember the past not the future hypothesis."

This is part of something more general. Programmers tend to write
functions that return objects. Once these objects are created they
are rarely modified. So a constructor can put references to older
objects in a new object but if you never modify the new object only
pass it around as a value its references can only point backward.

How about the "Functional programming is the norm, side effects the 
exception hypothesis."

Charles Fiterman	Geodesic Systems
Phone 312-728-7196	4745 N. Ravenswood Suite 111
Fax   312-728-6096	Chicago Il 60015
cef@geodesic.com

A computer language without garbage collection
  is like a city without garbage collection.