Swift does away with pointers == pervasive ARC

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 6/17/2014 5:10 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/17/2014 1:59 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> Keep in mind, for people in certain areas, the allure of a memory
>> management
>> system with no/minimal collection pauses, minimized memory
>> requirements and good
>> behavior in low-memory conditions (even if it all comes with a
>> non-trivial
>> overall performance cost and a little bit of care here and there) can
>> be VERY
>> strong. So, FWIW, that's the perspective where all this is coming from.
>
>
> Oh, I totally understand where it's coming from.

Fair enough.

> I'm trying to point out
> that ARC is not a magic zero-cost system. Its costs are SUBSTANTIAL. But
> in order to understand those costs, it is necessary to understand how
> exception handling works.

Oh right, I definitely don't mean to imply it's any sort of "no cost" 
deal. It's certainly all tradeoffs, of course. As you undoubtedly know, 
for some things, GC's costs can be high, too. But like I've said, I'm an 
ARC novice, so I'm just trying to gain an understanding of the extent of 
ARC's costs since it does, at the very least, have some intriguing 
properties.