The title itself is a recipe for disaster. Also this is a semi rant.
Yesterday I was informed that I will have the honour to implement the core functionality - which is an interface layer to use the driver of a very expensive hardware shit - of the software I’ve been working on as a frontend dev.
There are two possibilities for the language: C++ or C#. The one that was proposed/imposed is C#, which I know nothing of, while at least I have some hobbyist experience with C++; when asked if I could take some time to familiarise myself with C# I was basically laughed in the face, saying I will learn on the field and at least some of them have some experience with it.
Should I insist to go with C++, or is that an even worse idea in an already fucked up situation?
Circular references can also impede garbage collection, don’t forget.
And to further clarify, a proper object wrapping a resource like the ones you listed will release them when it is eventually collected, in the finalizer/destructor. However, you can’t know when that will happen, so we have IDisposable.Dispose() which can be used to release whatever critical resources the object is holding right away. :)
This is very wrong. Circular references are no problem for the garbage collector at all (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8840567/garbage-collector-and-circular-reference). You basically don’t need to worry about manual memory management at all, if you’re only dealing with managed code.
I was specifically thinking of circular event handler references, which I know was a thing at some point in the past. If .Net has improved since then, great.