Swift does away with pointers == pervasive ARC

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 6/16/2014 11:18 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/16/2014 5:48 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> Hmmm, I still don't buy it,
>
> I know, but you also have not responded to my explanation of why. Such
> as the "dec" being required to be inside an expensive exception handler.
>

Pardon my ignorance here, but is this a cost that would *always* be 
paid, or *only* while an exception is being thrown and the callstack is 
being unwound?

If it's only paid while an exception is thrown, then does it really 
matter? Exception throwing has never really come with any particular 
expectation of speed, being "exceptional" cases. Roughly how much of a 
slowdown are we talking here?