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by adrian_b
465 days ago
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That programming language exists. The old FORTRAN and COBOL language versions were like this. In ancient FORTRAN programs, the programmer typically computed a maximum possible size for the data and allocated statically in the main program one or more work arrays corresponding to that maximum size, which were either placed in a COMMON block of global variables or they were passed as arguments to the invoked functions and subroutines. In the functions or subroutines, the work arrays were typically partitioned by allocating in them various local variables. Overall, this approach was more reliable, because there were no risks of exceeding the memory limits, but it was much more tedious for the programmer, because the worst cases for memory usage had to be accurately predicted. |
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Well, most importantly, it fixated the program's limits. Got a bigger machine and wanted to tackle greater data-sets? You're out of luck, if you didn't have the source code. Old Unix programs were often like that. It were the GNU counterparts which often did away with such arbitrary limits allowing systems to grow and the software to stay relevant.