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0 pointskaba01y ago0 comments

So, RC is better than tracing GC, when it’s not used as memory management, and it is special cased everywhere.. got you!

Like, as I explicitly wrote, it is probably the correct choice for low-level languages close to the metal, that want easy compatibility with other languages through FFI. But the method itself has still got a much slower throughput than a tracing GC, when used in a similar manner. Anything else is a useless comparison, like is a bicycle better than a tank.

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devit1y ago

> But the method itself has still got a much slower throughput than a tracing GC, when used in a similar manner

That is correct, but the issue is not with reference counting, but rather with having unnecessary extremely frequent RC/GC operations.

Once frequency is reduced to only necessary operations (which could be none at all for many programs), reference counting wins since its cost is proportional to the number of operations, while GC has fixed but large costs.

eru1y ago

You can very well have a Rust-like language with Rust's model of 'compile-time memory management', but you replace all uses of reference counting with tracing garbage collection.

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