Thread

1. raverbashing · 1791179654 · focus · HN ↗

   I don't get why people do not prefer reference counting, it has more predictable runtime performance

   (though of course a swap is a swap - but you can "trigger" it depending on your memory or file access pattern)

   1. groestl · 1791181134 · focus · HN ↗

      Overhead per allocation, if you care about that, and reference circles.
   2. bheadmaster · 1791181447 · focus · HN ↗

      > more predictable runtime performance

      Not really, reference counting can cause a single object deallocation to trigger an arbitrarily long chain of deallocations.

   3. xxs · 1791181968 · focus · HN ↗

      ref counting is expensive in multi-threaded applications. Overall it would have worse performance. When it comes to predictability: deallocating a linked list (for instance) would have to deallocate all of the elements. Dealing with loops is also not simple, either.

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