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pjmlp 3 days ago

Thankfully not everyone agrees.

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/perc

We have already have had enough from anti-GC cargo cult from "manual memory management is great" folks.

Having a GC (which RC is also an algorithm subset), doesn't preclude having other features.

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creata 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Are there any public benchmarks for Perc? Or any hints as to what's going on inside?

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OtomotO 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There is also non manual, non GCed manual management.

I agree that a GC can be a viable implementation of memory management though.

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pjmlp 3 days ago | parent [-]

There isn't such thing, if you mean Rust, affine types systems require tree structures and have issues with multiple scopes, hence the memes with borrow checker.

Which I would refer as compiler assisted, although not really a proper term.

There is a reason outside Rust, everyone else is string to combine GC alongside affine/linear/effects/dependent types instead of one solution for everything.

The productivity of having a GC, with the type system capabilities to go lower level, when the profiler says so.

Although I have to conceded, Rust made a great job bringing ATS and Cyclone ideas into mainstream.

Additionally with AI powered languages, naturally most of this will be automated anyway.

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2 days ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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OtomotO 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Ref counting is also no GC by the definition of a GC I was brought up with.

But yes, I was also thinking about the borrow checker.

Not necessarily in Rust, as other languages start to adopt similar techniques.

	▲	shakna 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Maybe not how you were brought up, and people argue... But Watson & Watson, back in '87, described ref counting as "An efficient garbage collection scheme for parallel computer architectures". Even the dragon book refers to ref counting as a form of garbage collection. Line 2 of Ref counting's Wikipedia page refers to garbage collection. People have argued since the invention in 1960, but... Ref counting is one form of GC. [0] It might not be a tracing GC, but it is GC. [0] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/367487.367501
	▲	pron 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		As refcounting and tracing are the two primary starting points for garbage collection, they're its two pillars so to speak (e.g. https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~weimerw/2012-4610/reading/bacon-...), I don't know of any serious person in the memory management space who doesn't see refcounting as a GC, although some languages with a refcounting GC say "they don't have a GC" in their marketing material. As a general rule, tracing seeks to optimise for throughput while refcounting seeks to optimise for footprint, although the two can become more elaborate and converge (as shown in the paper I linked).
	▲	pjmlp 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Then somehow someone has taught you badly, any proper CS reference book in academia has it, like the famous GC Handbook, https://gchandbook.org/ The other languages adopting such type systems, also keep automatic resource management around for productivity. The ones that don't, are still in the looking for meaningful adoption stage.
	▲	vips7L 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Most academic definitions of garbage collection include reference counting. It’s just a form of it. https://gchandbook.org/contents.html