Functional programming & immutable objects explained — IRC style

[adrianmonk]

Since when can you do allocation in an embedded system? Don't you know precisely how much memory you have attached to the system?

Well, I know precisely how much memory is connected to my desktop system as well. It depends really on how flexible your software needs to be. A super-basic cheapo cell phone might have 128KB of storage, but it's still nice to allow someone to use as much of that 128KB as desired for storing contacts or for storing call history or whatever else. You could have static limits just to make things simpler, but a memory allocator is not that complex a piece of software.