Garbage Collection for Systems Programmers

[Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole]

On 06/04/2024 1:29 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>     Chasing no-GC as far as we did was a mistake that cost us precious
>     time and scarce resources. We need to be mature enough to admit that
>     it was a mistake and correct our course. Given the lessons and
>     direction of the industry over the intervening years, I would
>     strongly argue that now is the time to return our focus to the GC. [...]
> 
> 
> +100. While there /have/ been improvements in our current GC over the 
> past years, we're running against a brick wall in terms of available GC 
> algorithms, because of the pessimistic situation of no write barriers. 
> That closes the door to many of the major advancements in GC algorithms 
> over the past decade or two. It's time we stop sitting on the fence and 
> commit to a GC-centric language that actually has a competitive GC to 
> speak of, one on the level of Java or C#'s incremental generational GCs.

It is not an all or nothing situation.

We can have write barriers be opt-in, and if all binaries have it, then 
the GC can take advantage of it.

The only person that needs convincing now is the one that does the work.