On 4/18/2014 8:34 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
Well there's been work on that. I mentioned this recent paper in this group:
http://goo.gl/tavC1M, which claims RC backed by a cycle collector can reach
parity with tracing. Worth a close read.
A couple crucial points:
1. It achieves near parity with tracing, i.e. with a regular GC. It says nothing
about performance for regular pointer code, when those pointers are replaced
with ref counts.
2. It's a Java VM implementation. You can bet that the VM internally isn't using
ref counting - too slow.
3. I picked a GC for D because a GC coexists peacefully with pointers of all
types. This is not remotely true with ref counting. It's not an issue with Java,
which has no pointers, but this coexistence problem would be a huge one for D.
