Would you pay for GC?

[Tejas]

On Tuesday, 25 January 2022 at 07:13:41 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> On Tuesday, 25 January 2022 at 06:13:31 UTC, Random Dude wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 25 January 2022 at 03:37:57 UTC, Elronnd wrote:
>>> Apropos recent discussion, here is a serious question: would 
>>> you pay for either of these?
>>>
>>> - High-throughput/scalable gc.  High sustained allocation 
>>> rates, large heaps, many cores, compacting&generational
>>>
>>> - Concurrent gc.  No pauses
>>
>> I'd pay to have it removed and replaced with ARC.
>>
>> GC in it's current form can not compete with other more 
>> performant GCs and it shouldn't. D is in a unique position to 
>> enable people to write code as if they're writing python and 
>> also accommodate them when they want to do low-level 
>> optimizations.
>>
>> If we could just have automatic reference counting both the GC 
>> and No-GC people would be happy. It's okay if that route 
>> changes how pointers work (metadata would have to be added and 
>> some code would break), this is the right move in the long run.
>
> ARC will also not compete, unless one goes the extra mile of 
> making the compiler ARC aware, elide retain/release calls, do 
> cascade deletions in background threads, take care on cascade 
> deletions to avoid stack overflows on destructor calls, provide 
> multicore friendly versions of them,.....
>
> If you are paying to replace GC with ARC, without putting the 
> money to reach Swift level of performance (which is still 
> pretty lame versus last gen tracing GCs in Java/.NET), then you 
> will be getting lemons.
>
> https://forums.swift.org/t/a-roadmap-for-improving-swift-performance-predictability-arc-improvements-and-ownership-control/54206
>
> I can already see it, the forums being inundated with complains 
> about ARC performance versus other languages.

Even then people are dissatisfied, apparently.

I asked Reddit why ARC isn't used more widely despite Swift being 
so successful and was **swiftly**(pun intended 😉) corrected that 
Swift user share has become 50% of what it once was at it's peak.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Compilers/comments/s6r9wo/pure_arc_in_a_low_levelprogramming_language/htpx4g1/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3