Iterators, generators, finally, and scarce resources

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 4/30/14, 3:09 AM, Andy Wingo wrote:
> There are no other objects in JS that have a finalization facility or
> other "shut down" semantics.

This has actually come up as a problem for DOM objects.  Some people 
actually want a semi-generic facility to say "I'm done with you" instead 
of having to have per-object-type hacks...

> And yet many of them can indeed hold onto
> scarce resources (to the extent that is possible in JS, which is to say,
> approximately never in the browser)

It happens all the time in the browser.  You can hold on to address 
space (e.g. via huge typed arrays).  You can hold on to graphics card 
resources via WebGL objects. I expect to see more instances of this as 
we expose more hardware capabilities to the web.

> and none of them have similar facilities.

This is certainly true, sadly.

-Boris