And a function call is just a fancy JMP, still it's generally acknowledged to be better to have all the bookkeeping automated.
replyDoes defer in zig track the objects lifetime directly, or is it like the various other 'context' features in other languages where it only really works for lifetimes of function-local variables and leaves you on your own when things get more complicated? (which, IMO, is precisely when RAII becomes most useful. It does seem like most of these languages only consider the 'forgetting to cleanup on an early return from a function' case)
replyConstructors and destructors are also just function calls in C++
replyAnd you can't forget to type defer
How is defer not magic sauce?
replyWhether you consider it magic is up to you, but, unlike a destructor in RAII, there is nothing automatic going on. If you don't explicitly invoke a destructor, you won't get a destructor.
replyThe fact that you can explicitly invoke the destructor to happen later is simply syntactic sugar, just like if/else/while, or any other control construct more powerful than a conditional jump instruction.
And more importantly, you can choose what destructor to call. This is perhaps what's most underrated about defer, because defer can select among many different destructors possible, at multiple different levels (group free with arenas, individual free, etc).
reply> If you don't explicitly invoke a destructor, you won't get a destructor.
replyWhen you explicitly invoke a "destructor", you do it on many code paths (and miss one or two)
>The fact that you can explicitly invoke the destructor to happen later
You don't specify where the `defer`-red "destructor" will be invoked.