Garbage Collection for Systems Programmers

[jmh530]

On Tuesday, 9 April 2024 at 15:31:08 UTC, Lance Bachmeier wrote:
> [snip]
>
> I honestly don’t find that line of argument very convincing. 
> There are no numbers backing up the conclusions, and not even a 
> specific application given. We already have experience with the 
> status quo and the problems it can cause. There’s no 
> justification for ruling out other options based on speculation 
> that the performance hit will be unacceptable.

I don't doubt that there are some applications that will benefit 
from the types of GC algorithms that are enabled by write 
barriers, but I think the burden of proof is on the people 
proposing changes. They can create a fork with write barriers and 
benchmark some code vs. the normal compiler.

Regardless, if they can create a way to make it completely opt-in 
without breaking existing code, then that offsets much of the 
concern about performance.